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THE 



LIGHT 



OK 



THE NATIONS. 



BY 



CHARLES K. DEEMS, D. D., LIv. 33., 

ii 

Pastor of the Church of the Strangers, New York, and President of the 
American Institute of Christian Philosophy, 

AUTHOR OF 

" The Home Altar," "What Now?" " Weights and Wings," Etc. 

AND 

EDITOR OF "CHRISTIAN THOUGHT." 



ILLUSTRATED- 



SEP 19 188.4/ 



NEW YORK: ■■' y?A 

GAY BROTHERS & CO., 
14 Barclay Street. 






Copyright, 1884, by C. F. Deems. 




INTRODUCTION. 

IMPORTANT TO BE READ BEFORE GOING- FORWARD. 

After all that lias been written for and against Jesus, there are 
millions who now believe that he is " The Light of the Nations." 
So important a historical figure deserves repeated examination, in 
the light of successive generations and of accumulating scientific 
skill and research. 

The law which an author sets to himself in the composition of a book 
must be known before proper criticism can begin. If this volume, or 
any portion of it, be judged as if I had attempted a Life of Christ, the 
most grievous misapprehension of the volume and its author may be 
made. It is no more such a book than it is a volume of sermons or 
of poems. It carefully abstains from being a Life of Christ. A Life 
of Christ necessarily starts with the assumption that Jesus was Christ. 
It must be dogmatic, and can be useful mainly to Christians. I have 
assumed no such thing. Nor have I assumed in this book that the 
original biographers, the four Evangelists and Paul, were inspired. I 
simply assume that their books are as trustworthy as those of Herodo- 
tus and Xenophon, of Tacitus and Csesar. They write about the man 
Jesus, who was the son of Mary. They preserve Memorabilia of his 
acts and words. I deal with these evangelic biographers as I would 
with those classic authors. I strive to make a harmonious narrative 
from their records, and to ascertain what was the consciousness of Jesus 
as he performed each act and spoke each word, according to the laws 
of thought so far as they are known to me. This book must not be 
judged from any theologic stand-point. If my views of theology are of 
any importance, they must be sought in my Sermons, not here. 

vii 



V1U INTRODUCTION. 

There will be found in this book a new translation of the sayings of 
Jesus. The ordinary rule in such cases is, not to make a literal render- 
ing of each word by its synonym in the tongue into which it is trans- 
ferred, but, to represent the idioms of one language by those of another. 
I have departed from that canon, because all who read this book will 
have in their hands the Common Version, which, generally, does that 
work for them. The translations here furnished differ from those in the 
Common Version, in being usually almost strictly literal, and they have 
been purposely made so, that such of my readers as are unacquainted 
with the original may have an opportunity to compare a literal with 
an idiomatic version. My renderings from the Greek must be judged 
by scholars in the light of this statement. 

The language employed by Jesus was what is called the Palestinian 
Aramaic, which is also called Hebrew by early ecclesiastical writers, ac- 
cording to Papias, Irenseus, Origen, Eusebius,. and Jerome. Matthew's 
Gospel was written in that language. Matthew may have written also 
the Greek version of his own Gospel. The books of Mark, and 
Luke, and John were written in Greek, a language which it is prob- 
able Jesus sometimes employed. The autographs of these four books 
are supposed to have perished, and so probably have all the copies 
made in the first three centuries. In addition to the usual causes 
for the disappearance of books, we may mention in this case the tho- 
rough manner in which were executed the decrees of Diocletian in the 
beginning of the fourth century (February, a.d. 303) for the destruction 
of all the sacred books of the Christians, for the purpose of extirpating 
" the superstition," as he called it. Notwithstanding the severe penal- 
ties which impelled every magistrate to execute those decrees, some 
copies escaped the flames. 

The Diocletian persecution closed a.d. 313. Constantine, the first 
Christian Emperor, ascended the throne a.d. 324. In a.d. 328 he re- 
3alled Eusebius, who had been banished, and, in a letter which Eusebius 
quotes in his Life of Constantine, the Emperor directed him to cause 
" fifty copies of the Sacred Scriptures to be written on prepared parch- 
ment, in a legible manner, and in a commodious and portable form, by 
transcribers thoroughly practised in the art." The completion of this 
work Constantine acknowledged in a subsequent letter to Eusebius, 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

One of those copies, or perhaps the oldest copy of one of them, is the 
property of the Emperor of Russia. It is called the Codex Sinaiticus, 
because found in a convent on Mount Sinai, by Tischendorf, a learned 
German. That copy, being the oldest *extant, is the basis of my transla- 
tion. Whenever, therefore, the reader finds any of the words of Jesus 
in this book different from those in the common version, he will under- 
stand that he is thereby carried nearer to the fountain-head of the 
literature produced by Jesus and his utterances. 

The difference in the characteristics of the four authors, commonly 
called The Evangelists, is worthy of note. Matthew was a practical 
man of business ; Mark was an aesthetic observer ; Luke had a scientific 
bias, and John was devoutly metaphysical. We are permitted to see 
Jesus as he presented himself to four such students of his acts and char- 
acter. Our skill is to be exercised in combining their impressions. It 
is a great advantage to have a subject placed in so many different lights 

Jesus was the Founder of a Faith. He lived centuries ago. The 
most diverse claims have been made for his person and his teachings. 
Almost every saying of his has become the basis of a dogma. It will 
not be wonderful, then, that historians come upon actions and utterances 
of his which involve difficulties. Some of these are still difficulties to 
me. In such cases I have frankly said, " I do not understand this." 
So would it be, I think, with any other honest student and fair writer. 
By this candor I cannot lose the esteem of those whose esteem is worth 
having. But, I have not avoided the hard places. Timid readers may 
wish I had. Wherever there seemed to me to be an explanation, I have 
given it. It may satisfy some. It may lead others to discover what is 
more satisfactory to themselves. In no case, I believe, will unlearned 
readers of good sense be perplexed, and in no case, I trust, will scholars 
be scandalized. 

There has been no ambition to appear learned. To those who are not 
acquainted with the languages in which the Evangelists wrote, or the 
languages in which learned men have commented on these works, I have 
endeavored to make the way plain by all needed helps. Nor has there 
been an ambition of originality. WTierever I have used the labors of 
others I have given credit, so far as I recollect. If any failure on this 
point has occurred, it has been through inadvertence. To repair that, 
and to send students to the sources of my own stream of information, 



X INTRODUCTION. 

I have supplied a list of the books used in the preparation of this vol* 
ume. I have read up in the literature of the subject as well as I could. 

All writers on this subject have difficulty with the chronology. In 
this book the terminal points of birth and death, I think, are trustwor- 
thy, especially the latter ; but many of the incidents in the life have been 
arranged in an order which I have seen reason to change several times. 
The result of my investigation is the conviction that it is not now in 
the power of human skill to arrange a harmony of the facts in this 
biography, which should be positively asserted to be the precise order in 
which they occurred. Here and there are some that we know preceded 
one the other. There can be no doubt as to the order of the Baptism, 
the Temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration, etc., but 
minor incidents puzzle every chronologer. The historical and bio- 
graphical groupings in this book, as it goes to the printer, are the 
last result of my most careful study, and have been adopted in no in- 
stance simply for picturesque effect. It is proper to say that almost 
all the spots which Jesus made memorable by his personal presence 
have been visited by the author during a sojourn of several months in 
the Holy Land. He has thus had what aid geography can give to his- 
tory, and so has verified the topographical statements in this book. 

In the preparation of these pages I am sure that there has been no am- 
bition of novelty ; but I have not been afraid of new things, nor has any 
oninion commended itself to me because it was old. On the other hand, 
novelty has been no recommendation and antiquity no disparagement. 
I have sought to know the truth. When I believed I had found it, I 
wrote it, and now publish it without stopping to inquire whether these 
honest opinions will please or displease, or whether they put Jesus at an 
advantage or a disadvantage. In this I have sought to imitate the spirit 
and style of the Evangelists. A man would be sadly stupid who should 
spend some years on a subject which, more than any other, has engrossed 
the study of thoughtful men, without improving the opinions he formed 
'in earlier life on less investigation. The preparation of this book baa 
been, to me, its own " exceeding great reward." 

As far as practicable, I have laid aside all dogmatic prepossession* 
But in writing this book I have been preparing a Memoir of my Dear- 
est Friend, and if, for that Friend's sake, and in the spirit of that 
Friend, I have dealt with all the records most honestly, it is also fair to 



INTRODUCTION. XJ 

state that I have treated them with the reverence of manly love ; and, 
whatever may be the final decision of my readers, I conclude this work 
with a love for Jesus deeper and better than that which I feel for any 
other man dead or living. 

I have a final request. When my readers shall have read the whole 
book, and have attempted to answer the closing question on the 710th 
page, they will do themselves and me a favor if they will return to this 
page and answer this question : — 

If such a case can be made out by a rational examination of the 
Four Evangelists, on the ground that their memoirs are merely 
human in all respects, who is jesus, on the further supposition 
that those memoirs are divinely inspired records? 

My own belief is that they are inspired. That belief receives fresh 
confirmation from every examination of these books. On this grave 
subject I would not have myself misunderstood. It is because I am so 
thoroughly satisfied in my belief in the inspiration of these records 
that I have felt so safe in resting the argument of this volume on a 
basis which does not include that high claim. 

Charles F. Deems 

OHAPEL OP THE " CHURCH OP THE STRANGERS," ) 

4 Winthrop Place, New York. J 



CONTENTS 



PAET I. 

THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 
< [From B.C. 6 to A.D. 8. Thirteen years and a half.] 

CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY EVENTS, 

The birth of John Baptist announced, 15. — Mary and her genealogy, 17. — The birth of Jesus s» 
nounced, 19.— Mary's visit to Elizabeth, 20.— Birth of John, 21. — John's early life, 22. 

CHAPTER II. 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS.* ITS DATE. 

Joseph's dream, 23. — Jesus born, 23. — Examination of the chronology, 23. — Probable date, 28.— 
Another mode of approximation, 28. — From the death of Herod, 29. — From the astronomical cal- 
culation, 30. — From the slaying of the Bethlehemite infants, 30. — From the taxing, or census, 31. 

CHAPTER III. 
THE PLACE OF THE BIRTH : THE CIRCUMCISION. 

Bethlehem, 36. — Site never lost, 37. — The caravanserai, 40. — Vision of angels by shepherds, 40. — Jesus 
circumcised, 41. — Simeon, 41. — Anna, 42. 

CHAPTER TV. 

HIS FIRST YEARS. 

The Magi : who and whence, 43. — They find Jesus, 46. — They elude Herod, 47. — Joseph dreams again, 
47. — The flight into Egypt, 47. — Herod massacres the babes of Bethlehem, 48. — The return from 
Egypt, 49. — Nazareth, the home of Jesus, 50. — Jesus, at twelve years of age, in the Temple, 51. — 
Missed and found, 52. — His life in Nazareth, 54. 

CHAPTER V. 

STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS. 

JUD.2EA. Herod the Great, 56. — Family of Herod, 56. — His will, 58. — His funeral, 58. — Archelaus, 58. 
— Troubles in settling the succession, 58. — Sabinus, 59. — Varus, 60. — Archelaus confirmed, 60. — 
The pseudo- Alexander, 61.— Cyrenius, 62. — The revolt under Judas, 62. — Menahem, 63.— Coponius, 
63. — The Samaritans pollute the Temple, 63. — Pontius Pilate outrages the Jews, 64. — Tacitus and 
Josephus speak of Jesus, 65. 

Galilee. Herod Antipas, 65. — In love with Herodias, 66. — Quarrels with Pilate, 66. — Herodias, 66. 
— Character of Herod Antipas, 67. 

The Church. The High-priesthood, .67. — Caiaphas and Annas, 67. — The Sanhedrim, 68. 

The Sects. The Pharisees, 71.— The Sadducees, 71. — The Essenes, 72. — The Herodians, 72. 

PAET II. 

INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

[From A.D. 26 to A.D. 27. About one year.] 

CHAPTER I. 

JOHN'S PREACHING AND MINISTRY. 

''The Baptist" 1 opens the way for Jesus, 73. — Elijah, 73. — John's consecration, 74. — His ministry, 75. 
— Substance of his discourses : Repentance, 77. — Against formalism and scepticism, 78. — An- 
nounces a coming kingdom, 79. — Announces the presence of the ruler, 80. — His baptism, 80. — His 
ministry not permanently effective, 82. 

CHAPTER II. 

JESUS DESIGNATED AT HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 

Jesus comes to be baptized by John, 84. — Why Jesus was baptized, 84.— Certain mistakes, 84. — John's 
previous acquaintance with Jesus, 86. — John declines to baptize Jesus, 87. — Momentous crisis, 87. 
— The descending dove, 88. — John and Jesus, 88. — John the discoverer of Jesus, 88. — A voice, 89. 



(Xii) 



CONTENTS. Xll] 

CHAPTER III. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Accounts by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 91. — Place of the temptation, 92. — Explanatory theories, 9V 
— Sense of his humanity in Jesus, 95. — Excitement of Jesus at his baptism, 96. — The collapse, 96. 
— His narrative given humanly, 98. 

Batan, 98. — Idea of Satan not preposterous, 98. — Rational probabilities of the existence of Satan, 99, 
100.— Satan of Jesus not Jewish, 100.— The Jewish idea not Persian, 100.— The Satan of Job, 101. 
—Of David, 101.— Of the Chronicles, 101.— Of Zechariah, 101.— What Jesus believed about tha 
temptation, 102. 

First temptation, " the lust of the flesh," 103. — Second temptation, "the lust of the eye." 103.— Third 
temptation, "the pride of life." 104. — Assault on the Messiah side of Jesus, 105. — Satan's admis- 
sion, 105. 

Ministry of angels, 106.— Angels the highest creatures, 106.— Their power, 107.— Their activity, 107. 
—Their intelligence, 107.— Their holiness, 108.— Their numbers, 108.— Agents of God, 109.— "The 
Angel of Jehovah," 109. — The angels minister to Jesus, 111. 

CHAPTER TV. 

THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 

Committee from the Sanhedrim, 112. — John's testimony to Jesus, 112. — "The Lamb of God," 113. — 
First two disciples, 113. — Andrew and John, 114. — Simon (Peter), 114. — Philip, 115.— Nathanael, 
115.—" The Son of Man," 118.— The son of David, 119.— Bartholomew, 119. 

CHAPTER V. 
IN CANA AND CAPERNAUM. 

Cana of Galilee, 120. — The first miracle, 120. — The most memorable wedding, 121.— The mother of 
Jesus, 122. — The water-pots, 123. — The miracle, 124. — The lesson, 125.— A visit to Capernaum, 125. 

PART III. 

FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND PASSOVER IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
[One pear: probably from April, A.D. 27, to April, AD. 28.] 

CHAPTER I. 

CLEANSINQ THE TEMPLE. 

The brokers expelled by Jesus, 127. — His authority demanded, 127. — Reply of Jesun, 128. — The Tem- 
ple, 128. — Painful national recollections, 129. — Retort of the Jews, 130. — The nation shocked, 130. 
— The resurrection-thought, 131. — An Appeal, 131. — Jesus had no "policy," 132. 

CHAPTER II. 

NICODEMUS. 

Nicodemus, 133. — His address, 134. — Its caution, 135. — Reply of Jesus, 135. — Meaning of that reply, 
136. — "The Kingdom of God," 13S. — Nicodemus's reply, 138. — Response of Jesus, 139. — "Spirit" 
and "wind," 140. — Surprise of Nicodemus, 141. — Jesus claims pre-existence, 142. — Another lofty 
claim, 143.— Two great doctrines, 143. 

CHAPTER III. 

FROM 3VDMK TO SAMARIA. 

John and the disciples of Jesus baptizing, 145. — John's self -conquest, 146. — His last testimony for Jesus, 
147. — Mactuerus, 148. — Herod imprisons John, 148. — Jesus returns to Galilee, 149. — Shechem, 
149. — Origin of the Samaritans, 150. — Hatred between Jews and Samaritans, 151. — Jacob's well, 
152. — Samaritan woman at the well, 153. — A strange promise, 154. — The woman attempts con- 
troversy, 155. — Reply of Jesus, 156. —He declares himself the Messiah, 157 —Return of the disci- 
pies, 157. — Arrivals from the city, 158. — Samaritan ideas of the Messiah, 158. 

CHAPTER IV. 

FROM SAMARIA TO GALILEE. 

Je?us begins to preach, 160. — Heals the nobleman's son, 161. — In Nazareth, 162. — The synagogue, 
162. — Its influence, 103. — Its officers, 163.— Its service, 104. — Jesus reads from Isaiah, 1(55. — He 
shocks their prejudices, 165. — He is driven from Nazareth, 166. — Makes Capernaum his headquar- 
ters, 167. — Description of Capernaum, 167. — Its surrounding, 169. — Jesus preaches from a boat, 
170.— Wotderful draught of fishes, 170.— The fishermen follow Jesus, 171. 

CHAPTER V. 

DEMONIACS. 

The man with the unclean spirit, 172. — Demoniacal possessions : classical authorities, 173. — Jewish 
opinion, 174. — The New Testament writers, 174. — One theory, with its reasons, 174. — The opposing 
theory, with its reasons, 176. — Most probable theory, 179. — A demoniac cured in the synagogue, 179 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIBST TOUR OF GALILEE. 

Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, 181.— Exhaustive effects on Jesus, 182.— Jesus travels in Galilee, 
183.— The leprosy, 183.— Supposed to be incurable, 185.— Jesus heals a leper, 186.— The sufferer 
and the healer, 187.— Jesus withdraws from the public, 189.— Heals a paralytic, 189.— Importance 
of a word, 190.— An awful claim, 190 — CaU of Matthew, 191.— Matthew's feast, 192.— John's dis- 
ciples object, 193 The Old and the New, 194.— Illustrations, 195.— Jesus the dividing line of his- 
tory, 196. 

PAET IT. 

FEOM THE SECOND UNTIL THE THIRD PASSOVER IN THE PUBLIC MINISTRY 

OF JESUS. 
[From A.D. 28 to A.D. 29. One pear.] 

CHAPTER I. 

THE SABBATH QUESTION. 

The House of Oiitpouring, 198.— The impotent man, 200.— Cured on the Sabbath, 200.— The Sabbath 
before Moses, 201. — The Sabbath in the Decalogue, 202. — Its lessons, 203.— Pharisaic exactions, 
204. — Jesus never broke the Sabbath law, 205.— His reply to accusations, 206. — Remarkable dis- 
course, 206. — Jesus no egotist, 209.— The battle begun, 210. 

CHAPTER II. 
THE SABBATH QUESTION AGAIN. 

The disciples in the grain-field, 211 — The example of David, 211. — Example of the priests, 212. — 
Key to the Sabbath-idea, 212. — The battle continued, 213. — Question of healing on the Sabbath, 
213. — A counter-question, 214. — An ad hominem question, 215. — The cure of the withered hand, 
215. — The Herodians, 216. — Crowds follow Jesus, 216. — A movable pulpit, 217. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE TWELVE. 

A crisis, 218.— Selection of the twelve, 219.— Simon L, or Peter, 219.— Andrew, 221.— James I., 222.— < 
John, 223.— Philip, 225.— Nathanael, 226.— Levi, or Matthew, 227.— Thomas, 227.— James II., 
228.— Judas I., 230.— Simon II., 231.— Judas II. (Iscariot), 232.— "The Twelve," 235.— Why thii 
number, 235.— Their order, 236.— Types, 237.— Nothing of the "church" idea 239. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

Place of delivery, 241. — Reports by Matthew and Luke, 242. — The time, 245. — The Text: Character, 
245. — The Beatitudes: Elements of lofty character, 248. — The poor in spirit, 248.— Those who 
mourn, 251. — The meek, 252. — Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 254. — The merci- 
ful, 255.— The pure in heart, 256. — The peace-makers, 258.— The persecuted, 259. — The reviled, 
260. — Value of a lofty character, 261. — Jesus the completer of the law, 263. — Refutation of 
Pharisaic errors, 266.— Of murder, 266.— Of adultery, 271.— Of divorce, 272.— Of perjury, 
273. — Of revenge, 274. — Love and hatred, 277. — Directions for the discharge of duty, 280. 
—Alms-giving, 281.— Prayer, 282.— "The Lord's Prayer," 284.— Forgiveness, 292.— Fasting, 293.— 
Warnings: Against covetousness, 294. — Against double-mindedness, 294. — Against excessive 
anxiety, 295. — Against harsh judgments, 299. — Against doubting God, 301. — Against the broad 
way, 301.— Against hypocrisy, 303.— Conclusion : The safe foundation of cfiaracter, 304.— The 
manner of Jesus, 305. 

CHAPTER V. 

IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 

The centurion's servant, 307. — The centurion's humility, 308. — Jesus aamires him, 308. — The servant 
healed, 309. — In Nain, 309. — Jesus raises the dead, 310.— John hears of the works of Jesus, 312. — 
His message to Jesus and reply, 312.— Defence of John by Jesus, 313.— Relative estimate of John, 
314. — Both John and Jesus rejected, 315. — Jesus dines with a Pharisee and is anointed by a 
woman, 317. — The delicacy of Jesus, 318. 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE AND RETURN TO CAPERNAUM. 

A-ocompanied by women, 320.— Magdala, 320.— Mary Magdalene, 321.— Her devotion to Jesus, 322.— 
The most beautiful of loves, 323. — Capernaum, 324. — The blind and dumb demoniac, 324.— Phari- 
saic conspirators, 325.— The charge that Jesus has a demon, 325. — The reply of Jesus, 326. — He 
is more powerful than Satan, 326.— Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 327. — The sign of Jonah, 
331. — A woman's compliment, 333. — Mary and her sons, 333. — Jesus eats with a Pharisee and 
denounces Pharisaism, 334.— A "lawyer," 335.— Warning against hypocrisy, 337.— Parable of the 
rich fool, 337.— One of Pilate's outrages, 341.— Parable of the fig-tree, 343. 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER VII. 

A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 

Parable of the sower, 345.— Of the tares, 346.— Of the patient farmer, 346.— Of the mustard-seed, 346, 
— Of the leaven, 347.— Explication of the parable of the sower, 349.— Of the patient farmer, 355. 
— Of the mustard-seed, 356.— Of the leaven, 357. — Similitudes, 357. — The treasure in the field, 
357.— The pearl-buyer, 358.— The drag-net, 359. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A CHAPTER OP MIRACLES. 

Jesus had no politics, 361.— A political follower, 361.— A hard saying, 362.— Its difficulty, 363. — It» 
lesson, 363. — Another lesson, 364. — Storm on the lake, 364. — Jesus stills the storm, 265. — Gadara, 
365. — The demoniac, 367. — The swine, 368.— In Capernaum, 370.— Juirus, 371.— The woman with 
the hemorrhage, 371. — Is healed in touching Jesus, 371.— Death of Jairus's daughter, 372.— Jestu 
restores the daughter of Jairus to life, 373. — Two blind men restored, 375. — Jesus cures a dumb de- 
moniac, 375. — In Nazareth, 377.— Again rejected by his own people, 377. 

CHAPTER IX 

THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE AND RETURN TO CAPERNAUM. 

In Galilee, 379. — A missionary movement, 379. — Address of Jesus, 380. — The route of the twelve, 381. 
— The home-altar, 382. — A warning, 382. — A consolation, 383. — The gospel to be a discrimination, 
384.— A frightful figure, 385.— A great step forward, 385.— John Baptist beheaded, 385.— Herod 
hears of Jesus, 386.— Return of the twelve, 3S6.— Miraculous feeding of five thousand, 388.— 
Storm on the lake, 390i — Jesus walking on the waters, 391. — Progressiveness of Jesus, 392. — In- 
tense excitement, 393. — The bread-seekers, 394. — They demand a sign, 395. — Jesus again offends 
the Pharisees, 396. — Their puzzle, 397. — Jesus sifts his followers, 398. 



PAET V. 



PROM THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE ENSUING FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

[From April to October, A.D. 29. Six months.] 

CHAPTER I. 

UNSETTLED. 

Tradition, 399. — Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, 400. — What defiles a man, 401. — In Phoenicia, 402. — 
The Syro-Phoenician woman, 403. — Jesus appreciates holy wit, 406. — The Decapolis, 406. — Cure 
of the deaf stammerer, 408. — Healing, 409. — Feeding of four thousand, 409. — Dalmanutha, 410. — 
A sign demanded, 411. — Addressed to weather-prophets, 412. — The leaven of the Pharisees, 413. — 
Bethsaida, 413. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE GREAT CONFESSION. 

Csesarea Philippi, 415. — Another crisis, 415. — Not struck root, 416. — Peter's solemn confession, 417. — 
Jesus receives Messianic homage, 417. — Address of Jesus to Peter, 418. — The word "church," 420. 
—His "congregation," 420. — The power of the keys, 421. — Jesus controls history, 423. — He pre- 
dicts his resurrection, 424. — Rebukes Peter, 424. — Address to his disciples, 425. — Its meaning, 425. 

CHAPTER in. 

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 

Account by the Evangelists, 427.— Why Elijah must first come, 428.— Site of the transfiguration, 428. 
—Peter's conjecture, 429. — The voice, 429. — Influence on the disciples, 430. — A perplexity, 430. — 
Another perplexity, 430. — Region of Csesarea Philippi, 431. — The demoniac boy, 432. — Jesus healfl 
him, 433. 

CHAPTER TV. 

LAST DAYS IN GALILEE. 

Through Northern Galilee, 435.— The Temple-tax, 436.— A miracle of knowledge, 437.— Messianio 
hopes, 438. — The rule of precedence, 438. — John's frank confession, 439.— Schism, 440.—" If two 
agree," 441.— Idea of a true church, 442.— Parable of the unmerciful servant, 442. — The mission 
of the Seventy, 444.— Lnhospitable Samaritan village, 446. 

PAET VI. 

FROM THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST PASSOVER WEEK. 

[From October, A.D. 29, to April, A.D. 30. Six Months.] 

CHAPTER I. 

AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

rhe Feast of Tabernacles; 447.— Evening service, 448.— Supplemental festival, 449.— Jesus at the feast, 
449.— His defensive speech, 450. — He attacks his enemies, 451.— Asserts his heavenly origin, 452. 



£V1 CONTENTS. 

—An alarming speech, 453.— The great day of the feast, 454.— The fountain of Siloam, 454.— 
They cannot arrest Jesus, 455. — In the treasury, 456. — The woman taken in adultery, 456. — 
Caught in their own trap, 457. — Conflict of Jesus with his enemies, 457. —Jesus more deeply in- 
censes his enemies, 460. — Jesus charged with having a demon, 461.— His reply, 462. — Jesus before 
Abraham, 462. 

- CHAPTER II. 

THE FEAST OP DEDICATION. 

Near Jericho, 463. — Parable of the Good Samaritan, 464. — From Jerusalem to Jericho, 465. — Bethany : 
Mary and Martha, 466. — Reply of Jesus to Martha, 467.— The blind man, 469.— Existence of evil, 
469. — The ancient pagan idea, 470.— The Hebrew idea, 470. — "Who did sin ? " 471. — What Jesus 
thought of it, 472.— Manner of the healing, 473.— Healed on the Sabbath, 473.— The patient and 
his parents examined, 474.— Jesus meets him, 477. — Discourse of the shepherd and the sheep, 478. 
— Division among his enemies, 479.— A challenge, 480.— Exalted claims, 480. 

CHAPTER III. 

IN PEREA. 

Bethany, east of Jordan, 482. — Jesus visits the place of his baptism, 482. — The dropsical man, 484. — 
Parable of the Great Supper, 485. — Terms of discipleship, 486.— Parable of the Lost Sheep, 487.— 
Of the Lost Coin, 487.— Of the Prodigal Son, 4S7.— Of the Unjust Steward, 489.— Meaning of the 
parable, 489. — Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 491. — Prayers to saints. 493. — Of offences 
and forgiveness. 494. — A prayer for faith, 494. — Sickness and death of Lazarus, 495. — Devotion 
of Thomas, 497. 

CHAPTER IV. 

JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 

Bethany, near Jerusalem, 498. — Jesus claims to be The Resurrection, 500. — Mary and Jesus, 501. — 
The grief of Jesus, 502. — At the grave, 503. — Lazarus raised from the dead, 504. — The Sanhedrim, 
505. — Acknowledge his miracles, 505. — Reject him as Messiah, 506. — Caiaphas, 506. — His prophecy, 
507.— Ephron, 507.— Ten lepers healed, 509.— The Parousia of the Son of Man, 511.— Parable of 
the Unjust Judge, 512. — Its lesson, 513. — Despondency of Jesus, 514. — Parable of the Pharisee and 
Publican, 514. — Final departure from Galilee, 516. — Divorce, 516.— Mosaic law of divorce, 517.— 
True law of divorce, 520. 

CHAPTER V. 

GOING TO JERUSALEM. 

Jesus blesses little children, 523. — The rich ruler, 524. — " Who can be saved ? " 527. — The Palingenesia, 
528. — Parable of the laborers, 528. — The lesson, 530. — A third warning, 530. — The ambitious 
brothers, 532. — The blind nien, 533. — Blind Bartimseus healed, 535.— Jericho, 536. — Zacchasus, 537. 
—His conversion, 538. — Parable of the pounds, 539. — Bethany: House of Lazarus, 541. — Crowds 
nock to see Jesus, 542. — His last Sabbath, 542. 

PAET VII. 

THE LAST WEEK. 

[From April 2 to April 8, A.D. 30.] 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST DAT. 

Palm-Sunday, 543. — Jesus riding, 544. — Great excitement, 545. — "The church" frightened, 546. — 
In sight of Jerusalem, 547. — Jesus apostrophizes Jerusalem, 548. — Entering the city and the 
Temple, 548.— Greeks seek him, 549.— The JBath-ITol, 550.— What was it? 551.— Jesus knew it, 552. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE SECOND DAT. 

The barren fig-tree cursed, 554. — Trouble in the narrative. 555.— A great lesson, 556. — A grand truth, 
557. — The second cleansing of the Temple, 557. — Fine discriminations, 558. — An act of mercy, 
558. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE THIRD DAT. 

" 3y what authority?" 561. — A counter-dilemma, 562. — Puzzled priests, 563. — Parable of the Two 
Sons, 564. — Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, 564. — Parable of the Marriage of the King's Son, 
565. — Without the wedding-garment, 567. — Conspiracy, 56S. — Attempt to ensnare Jesus, 569.— 
An adroit question, 570. — The net torn, 571. — A profound lesson, 571. — Question by the Sadducees, 
673. — Reply of Jesus, 574. — Jesus against Pantheism, 574. — The great commandment, 576. — The 
reply of Jesus, 576. — David's son and David's Lord, 578. — The valedictory to the Jews, 579. — Con- 
trasted with the " Sermon on the Mount," 581. — Final woe, 587.— Last times, 587.— The heart of 
Jesus melts, 588. — The widow's mite, 589.— Last utterance of Jesus in the Temple. 5S9.— Parable 
of the Ten Virgins, 593. — A prophecy, 594.— Jerusalem to be destroyed, 595. — Pseudo-Christs, 596. 
— General judgment of mankind, 596. — Jesus the representative of humanity, 598. — Absence ot 
dogmatism, 59y. 



CONTENTS. XV11 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FOURTH DAY. 

Disappointed hopes, 600. — Feast in Simon's house, 600. — Mary anoints Jesus, 600. — Jndas objects, 601. 
— Reply of Jesus, 601. — A meeting of conspirators, 602. — The capture postponed, 602. — Judas cornel 
to them, 603.— The case of Judas, 603.— Fresh examination, 604-611. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE FIFTH DAT. 

The first day of unleavened bread, 613.— Preparations for the Paschal Supper, 614. — At whose house, 
614. — Between the evenings, 615. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE SIXTH DAY. 

Sec. 1. The Supper. Jesus's opening speech, 616. — Washes their feet, 617. — Peter's refusal, 617. — 
The lessoD, 618. — Sad prediction, 619. — Self-inspection, 619. — Judas leaves, 620. — Peter puzzled, 
620. — Consoling words, 622. — Philip's materialism. 623. — Thaddeus perplexed, 624. 

Sec. 2. The Valedictory and Last Prayer. The Hallel, 624.— An out door discourse, 625. — 
A pause, 626. — Disciples express belief, 627. — The last prayer with the disciples, 627. 

Sec. 3. Gethsemane. The Ivedron valley, 628. — In the garden, 630. — Solitary prayer, 630. — A horror, 
630. — The sweat of blood, 631. — The betrayal, 631. — Jewish criminal law, 632. — Prejudgment, 633 
— Irregularities, 633. — The signal. 634.— The arrest, 634.— Peter's zeal, 635.— Forsaken, 635. 

Sec. 4. The Trial, 636. Fresh outrage, 636.— Annas, 636.— Caiaphas, 637.— Reply of Jesus, 038.- 
Peter, 638.- -His denials, 637-640. — Daybreak, 641. — False witnesses, 641. — Jesus put on oath. 042 
— The judge in a rage, 643. — Intense excitement, 6-14. 

Sec. 5. Pilate. The Procurator, 644.— The jus gladii, 644.— To Pilato. 645.— Play of passions, 645 
—A halt, 646.— Change of ground, 647. — In the praetorium, 648. — Jesus replies to Pilate, 649. — 
A contrast, 650. 

Sec. 6. Herod. Herod and Jesus, 650. — Herod and Pilate, 651. — Jesus sent to Herod, 651. — Jesua 
speechless, 652. 

Sec. 7. Back to Pilate. Pilate and the Sanhedrim, 652. — The people against Jesus. 653.— Barabbas, 
654. — Pilate's wife's dream, 654.— The unstable people, 655. — Pilate washes his hands, 656. — Jesus 
scourged and mocked, 656. — Pilate in trouble, 657. — "Ecce Homo ! " 657. — Pilate seeks to release 
Jesus, 658. — " Caesar's Friend," 659. — A dying nationality, 660. — The sentence, 660. 

Sec. 8. The last of Judas. His hopes and fears, 660. — The ground gives way, 661. — He returns to 
the priests, 661.— They regard him a fool, 662. — He flings the money away, 662.— Potter's Field, 663. 

Sec. 9. Going to Calvary. Bearing the cross, 663. — The Cyrenian, 663. — Form of the cross, 664. — 
Daughters of Jerusalem, 664. — Jesus prophesies, 665. — Golgotha. 665. — The sour wine, 666. 

Sec. 10. From Nine o'clock till Noon. Jesus prays for his tormentors, 667. — The seamless gar- 
ment, 667. — The epigraph, 668. — Caesar's verdict, 668. — Jesus reviled, 669. — The impenitent thief , 
669. — The penitent thief, 670. — Jesus accepts him, 671. — Near noon, 671. — His mother, 672. 

Sec. 11. From Noon until Three o'clock. Noon and darkness, 673. — The cry, 674. — A mys- 
tery, 674. — The light returns, 675. — Jesus thirsts and dies, 676. — An earthquake, 676. — The cen- 
turion, 676. 

Sec. 12. From Three o'clock until Evening. A ritualistic difficulty, 677. — The thieves killed, 678. 
— The spear-thrust, 67S. — Physical causes of death of Jesus, 679. — What was his agony ? 683. — 
Joseph and Nicodemus, 684. — Secret disciples, 684. — In a garden, 685. — Love's last vigiL 685. 

PAET YIII. 

RESURRECTION OF JESUS AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 
[Forty Days. From April 9 to May 19, A V. 30.] 

I. The Sabbath after crucifixion, 686. — The sepulchre guarded. 687. — Preparations for embalming, 

687. — A vision in the sepulchre, 688. — A message to Peter, 688. — John and Peter, 689. — Mary of 
Magdala sees Jesus, 690.— Her obedience, 690.— The other women, 691.— The watch, 691.— The 
Sanhedrim, 691.— The conspiracy, 692. — On the way to Emmaus, 693. — Jesus reveals himself, 695. 
—He appears to Peter, 696. — First assembly of the disciples. 697. — Jesus in their midst, 697. — The 
Holy Spirit, 698. — Absolution, 698. — Thomas incredulous, 699. — The second assemblage, 700. 

II. The' Apostles in Galilee, 700.— Jesus by the lake, 701. — Peter's ordeal, 702.— A prediction, 703. — 
John, 703. . 

III. Tabor. 704. — "Five hundred brethren at once," 704. — Jesus reappears, 705. — The commission, 
705.— The last recorded word, 705.— Jesus's concept of God, 706.— All restrictions removed, 706. 
— A universal religion, 707. — A claim and a prediction, 707. — The fulfilmp.nt, 707. 

IV. The Ascension, 709. 

Appendices. 

Chronology of the Birth of Jesus, 711.— Capernaum, 711. — Addition to note on page 189, 711.— 
Slaves at Jubilee, 711.— Mary of Magdala, 712. — A translation explained, 712. — Discipline, 712. 
The woman taken hi adultery, 713.— Bethany =Bethabara, 713. — Translation of Mattiew rriv. 
10, 713.— Physical cause of the death of Jesus, 713. 

Description of Illustrations, 729. 




o/ne' S^mm' or p/m' oA / atwnd>. 




Ikfrt of lien 





f Ijc Bations ujlricl) are $aneo 

aflalh in tbe Ctgljt 




PART I. 
THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS 

FROM B.O. 6 TO A.D. 8-ABOUT THIRTEEN YEARS AND A HALT. 



CHAPTER I. 



PRELIMINARY EVENTS. 



In the reign of Herod the Great, in Judea, lived Zacharias and 
Elizabeth. They were of priestly descent and of great age, were 
childless and without hope of children. Their 
Jives had been blameless. Their family, their 
employment, and their character gave them an air of sanctity. 
Zacharias was of the course of Abia, being the eighth of the 
twenty-four courses established by David. (1 Chron. xxiv. 10.) 

One day, in the order of his course, according to the custom 
of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went 
into the temple of Jehovah. While engaged in this solemn act, 
he beheld an apparition standing on the right side of the altar of 
incense. The sight troubled Zacharias. Luke says it was an 
angel, and that Zacharias was told by the angel that his name 
was Gabriel. This is the name of the man whom Daniel had 

15 



16 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



Birth of John 
announced. 



seen in a vision, and from whom he learned the time when the 
Messiah should appear. (Daniel ix. 21-23. Gabriel=Man oi 
God.) Gabriel predicted to Zacharias that Eliza- 
beth should bear a son, whose name should be 
called John (in Hebrew, Jehoanan, meaning the 
gift of Jehovah, equivalent to Theodore) ; that he should drink 
neither wine nor strong drink (Numbers vi. 1-21), but that he 
should be filled with the Holy Ghost, and have the power and 
office of Elias, namely, to go before the Lord and turn the hearts 
of the fathers to the children, and to make the people ready for 
the Lord, as Malachi had predicted in the last words of the Old 
Testament. Zacharias, being incredulous, asked a sign of Gabriel. 
It was given. He was to be dumb until the birth of his child. 

While this was going on, the whole congregation — at this time 
viiusually large — were silently praying in the outer court. The 
people wondered at the tarrying of Zacharias. "When he came 
forth he could not speak. From his solemn manner and speech- 
lessness the people concluded that he had seen a vision. They 
were then in expectation of the Messiah. 

Zacharias finished his week's work and departed to his own 
house, which was probably in Hebron, or Juttah. There Eliza- 
beth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying, " Thus hath 
Jehovah dealt with me, in the days wherein He looked on me, to 
take away my reproach among men." As a Deliverer was always 
looked for, the highest desire of a Hebrew bride, in the line of 
David, was to become a mother — if perhaps it might be, mother of 
the great Expected King. Barrenness, therefore, was a reproach. 
While Elizabeth was quietly awaiting her time in the hill coun- 
try of Judea, another wonder occurred in the obscure little city 
of Nazareth, in the heart of Galilee of the Gen- 
tiles, far from the splendid temple where Zacha- 
rias had beheld his vision. In that remote place dwelt a simple 
Hebrew maiden, whose name was Maky. She was poor. Her 
society was that of the common work-people. She was betrothed 
to a kinsman, a carpenter,* named Joseph. But royal blood ran 



* The word translated "carpenter" 
means any worker in wood, builder of 
houses or of ships, or maker of wooden 
furniture. We know that Joseph was 
not a ship -builder. It is not probable 



that he was a house-builder, because of 
the scarcity of wood and the custom of 
building stone houses. He was probably 
a maker or mender of furniture. It haa 
been suggested that he was an architect. 



PRELIMINARY EVENTS. 17 

through her veins, and the gifted King David was her ancestor. 
So great, however, had been the decline of her people, that even 
the race of Jewish kings had failed to keep so accurate an account 
of their genealogy as to save historians from great perplexity. 

Two tables of genealogy have been preserved — one in the bio- 
graphical sketch by Matthew, and another in that by Luke. It is 
noticed that both trace the descent of Joseph 
rather than of Mary, for whom it is specially Mar !. nea 0gy ° 
necessary to make a descent from David, seeing 
that her wonderful Son is reputed to have had no earthly father. 
But if Mary was the daughter of Jacob, as has been supposed, 
she was the first cousin of Joseph, so that a table of his genealogy 
is in fact, if not in form, a table of Mary's. 

These two tables present very grave difficulties, but not per- 
haps insurmountable. Matthew says that Joseph was the son of 
Jacob ; Luke says that he was the son of Heli. The former pre- 
serves the genealogy of Joseph as legal successor to the throne of 
David, the latter his private genealogy, showing his real birth as a 
descendant of David. Jacob and Heli might both have been sons 
of Matthan, who was thus grandfather to both Joseph and Mary. 
Jacob might have been Mary's father, as was generally supposed, 
and Heli Joseph's father. Or, Mary might have been Matthan's 
granddaughter by her mother, whose name has not been pre- 
served. This latter is asserted to have been the fact by Hippo- 
lytus of Thebes, in the 10th century ; but his statement probably 
rested upon tradition, the value of which we cannot now ascertain. 
But if it were true, then Jacob might really have had no son, and 
Matthew gave his name as Matthan's eldest son, because Matthew 
was making a list of successive heirs to the throne, not of succes- 
sive progenitors, the latter being the work of Luke. 

If we compare Luke's personal table with Matthew's official 
table of genealogy, we find that the lineal descent was broken in 
Jechonias (Matt. i. 12), who could not have been literally the 
father of Salathiel, as he is declared childless in Jeremiah xxii. 
30. It is clear from this that Matthew could have been giving 
only the names of the heirs to the throne. And this simple ex- 
planation, if applied to Matthew's table, according to the Jewish 
law in Numbers xxvii. 8-11, may go far towards clearing up diffi- 
culties. Even if, with Dean Alford, we take the ground that the 
difficulties created by the two tables cannot be solved without 
2 



18 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



knowledge which we do not possess, it would not be positive proof 
against the general conclusion which the tables undertake to 
reach, namely, that Jesus was a descendant of David, because the 
writers may have had knowledge which we do not possess, — or 
there may have crept some clerical errors into the text, which do 
not vitiate the general line. 

If even the tables were abandoned, there still remain such ev- 
idences as these : (1). The nearly contemporaneous biographies of 

, ., Jesus, all indeed upon which we base our knowl- 

edge of him, speak of him as the " Son of Da- 
vid." He was repeatedly addressed as such, and never declined 
the title. Unless we accept it, we are obliged to consider Jesus 
an arrant impostor. There can be no middle ground. So great 
a man could never, without being a very bad man, be party to 
what the gifted M. Renan mischievously calls " innocent frauds" 
a solecism in language and a contradiction in thought.* (2). Paul 
was a scrupulous Pharisee. He knew where to find the records 
and how to satisfy himself. In 2 Tim. ii. 8 he speaks positively 
of " Jesus Christ of the seed of David," '*» a-Trsp^ccrt^ &*$}. 
(3). " The Emperor Domitian was at first uneasy at this illus- 
trious descent, which might lend itself to ambitious or seditious 
views, but was reassured on seeing the horny hands of these 
children of a king, become common artisans." (De Pressense's 
" Jesus Christ," book ii.) 



* M. Renan denies the existence of 
the family of David, on such slender 
grounds as the following question indi- 
cates : "If the family of David still 
formed a distinct and well-known group, 
how happens it that we never see it 
figuring by the side of the Sadokites, 
the Boethuses, the Asmoneans, or the 
Herods, in the great struggles of the 
times?" (Life of Jesus, ch. xv.) That is 
fery good for a poet, but very poor for a 
historian. A question may be answered 
by a question : Should not M. Renan 
have known that when he wrote there 
were delapsed families of royal blood liv- 
ing in Europe, who were not ' 'figuring by 
the side" of the Bonapartes or the Bis- 
marcks, ' ' in the great struggles of these 
times " ? He says the Asmoneans never 



claimed descent from David. Is that 
an argument ? Because people who do 
not belong to a certain family make no 
claim to the relationship, is that a proof 
that another man's claim is false ? He 
admits that Jesus seemed to take pleas- 
ure in the name of the " Son of David," 
' ' for he performed most graciously those 
miracles which were sought of him in 
this name." And to verify this M. Re- 
nan cites several passages in Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke ! Is it not surprising 
that any man can be in such a moral 
state as to write a glowing, almost ador- 
ing, poetical romance of one whom he 
begins by representing as a sneaking 
impostor? In that view the " Vie de 
Jesus " is the most remarkable mora) 
phenomenon in modern literature. 



PRELIMINARY EVENTS. 



19 



The simple maiden Mary was residing in Nazareth, a small 
town among the hills which constitute the south ridges of Leba- 
non. The historians give her no worship, no idealizing, no halo. 
They describe her as a quiet soul, looking and longing for the 
salvation of her nation. Her becoming a mother was supernatu- 
ral, in the sense of a loftier class of influences bearing down upon 
that world we call " the natural," by which we can reasonably 
mean only so much of the chain of cause and effect as we discern. 
It is as unphilosophical to deny supernature as to deny nature. 
In writing history we must follow our best authorities, and how- 
ever unsatisfactory they may be, they will always be our best until 
better be found. In this history we must mainly follow the writ- 
ers called the Evangelists. If they set forth before us what 
Neander calls "the divine ideal become a reality," shall we throw 
away this finest thing because it is so fine % 

Elizabeth was in her sixth month of retirement, when Mary, a 
virgin, saw an angelic apparition in the city of Nazareth. The angel 
is called Gabriel by the historians. Perhaps this 
is the name he gave to Mary. Her report of the ann0U nced. 
interview was that the angel said to her, " Hail, 
highly favored ! The Lord is with you ; and blessed are you 
among women ! " This annunciation troubled the simple maiden, 
and she began to think what it might mean, when the angel spoke 
again and said, " Fear not, Mary : for you have found favor with 



God. And, see ! 



you 



shall conceive and bear a son, 



shall call his name Jesus.* 
called the Son of the Most High. 



, and you 
And he shall be great, and shall be 
And the Lord God shall give 
him the throne of his father David, and he shall rule the house 
of Jacob through the ages, and of his kingdom there shall be no 
end." 

Knowing herself to be of the lineage of David, she had no 
surprise at the assumption that her son should be a descendant 
of the great king; but that she should be at once a mother and a 
virgin was a puzzle to her, and she took courage to say as much 
to the angel. The angelic reply was, " The Holy Spirit shall 
come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall invest you 



* Jestis = Joshua == a Saviour. Joshua 
was a common name at that time, and 
the reason for its bestowment upon this 



Child of Miracle is given in Matt. i. 21, 
because he should "save his people 
from their sins." 



20 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



like a cloud, in order that the holy thing shall be called the Son 
of God. And, behold, Elizabeth, your relative, even she is preg- 
nant with a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month to 
her called barren : for nothing is impossible with God." Mary 
was as devout as she was modest, and she said to the angel, 
"Behold, I am the servant of the Lord! Let it be to me 
according to your word." And the angel left her, and she 
patiently awaited all the terrible misapprehensions and perils to 
which this honor God was about to give her would certainly ex- 
pose her. 

Yery shortly after this Mary paid a visit to her cousin Eliza- 
beth, in the "Highlands" of Judea, to congratulate that relative 
upon the prospective joys of maternity, and per- 

Elizabeth. na P s to receive counsel for her own behavior in 

her peculiar circumstances. She entered the 
house of Zacharias, and upon the delightful surprise caused by 
her salutation Elizabeth felt the first life-movement of her own 
unborn babe, and cried out with joy, "Happy are you among 
women, and happy your offspring ! And whence is this to me 
that the mother of my Lord should come to me ? For lo ! as 
soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the babe 
leaped within me for joy.* And blessed is she that believed : 
for there shall be a performance of those things that were told 
her of Jehovah!" 

Then Mary, as if by sudden inspiration, uttered that glorious 
canticle which the Christian church has made one of its chief 
hymns under the title of the Magnificat, and which is recorded 
in Luke i. 46-55. 



The Magnificat. 



" My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit exults in God my Saviour ; for 
He has looked on the low condition of His servant ; for, behold, from this 
time all generations shall call me blessed, because the 
mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His 
name ; and His mercy is to generations and generations of them that fear 
Him. He has made strong His arm ; He has scattered the proud with the 
thought of their hearts ; He has brought down the mighty from thrones, and 
exalted the humble ; He has filled the hungry with goods, and sent the rich 



* Physicians designate this symp- 
tom of advanced gestation by the name 
of "quickening." It is a common phe- 



nomenon, produced by any sudden em© 
tion. 



PRELIMINARY EVENTS. 



21 



Birth of John. 



away eir.pty. He has helped Israel his servant, and remembered his mercy 
as he said to our fathers, to Abraham and his posterity forever." * 

After this Mary stayed with Elizabeth three months, until just 
before the birth of John, and then returned to her own home in 
Nazareth. 

Elizabeth's full time came, and she was the mother of a son. 
Her relatives and neighbors collected to congratulate her. On 
the eighth day, according to Jewish law, the child 
was to be circumcised. Some near relative seems 
to have attempted to officiate in the place of Zacharias, who was 
still dumb. He gave him his father's name, but the mother inter- 
posed and said, " No ; but he shall be called John," a name not 
belonging to her husband's family, but known in the house of 
Levi and among the Maccabaean princes. The friends remon- 
strated with Elizabeth, and appealed to Zacharias, who surprised 
the company by writing upon his tablets, " His name is John." 
Immediately his dumbness left him, and he broke forth into a 
canticle, which the Christian church has since preserved under 
the name of the JBenedictus. 



The Benedictus. 



"Blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed 
1 lis people, and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David 
His servant, as He said by the mouth of His holy prophets 
from of old ; a salvation from our enemies, and from the 
hand of all that hate us, to perform His mercy with our fathers, and to remem- 
ber His holy covenant, the oath which he swore to Abraham our father, to 
grant us without fear, being delivered froni the hand of our enemies, to serve 
Him in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. 

"And you, little child, shall be called a prophet of the Most High; for you 
shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give a knowledge 
of salvation to His people, with a forgiveness of sins, on account of the com- 
passionate mercies of our God, by which a morning from on high has visited 
us, to illuminate those sitting in darkness and the shade of death, to direct 
our feet in the way of peace." 

The extraordinary circumstances attending the birth of John 



* We shall come often on the word 
translated "forever." In our English 
dictionaries and philosophical books we 
write it ceon. The Greek is a<wi>, and 
signifies a life -time of anything — the 
space of time in which anything exists. 
" Through the aeon " means while that 



thing or that state of affairs exists. 
Here it means as long as the posterity 
of Abraham exists. It does not involve 
the idea of absolute endlessness. E'tj 
top aiuiva may be translated " perpetu- 
ally." 



22 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



produced a profound impression upon all who saw and heard. 
The fame of these things spread throughout the 
o s eary i an d ? an d deepened the conviction of the people 
that their nation was on the eve of great events, 
and quickened their hopes of speedy deliverance from the Roman 
yoke. The age of the prophets seemed to be rolled back. Per- 
haps this was Elijah ; he might even be the Messiah. And thus 
the very birth of John was a harbinger of Jesus. 

The boy grew in physical and mental vigor, in virtue and moral 
energy. As he approached manhood he separated himself from 
his worldly countrymen and hid himself in the deserts of Judea, 
a thinly peopled region west of the Dead Sea, where he gave 
himself to a life of asceticism and religious study until the time 
of his entrance upon his public ministry. 




AND FRUIT OP THE Ci ROB. — " HUSKS." 



CHAPTER II. 



BERTH OF JESUS I ITS DATE. 



The birth of Jesus occurred under the following circumstances: 
Joseph, to whom Mary was espoused, was a devout Jew. He 
knew nothing of the announcement which had 
been made to her by the angel. After her return 
from the visit to Elizabeth it became apparent that she was about 
to become a mother. Shocked at the discovery, Joseph thought 
of making an example of her. But his love was not wholly 
destroyed by her supposed misconduct, and he was minded to put 
her away privily, which was a milder course, as it saved her from 
the shame of public exposure. Pondering these things in his 
troubled and affectionate heart, he had a dream, 
in which the angel said, " Joseph, son of David, 
fear not to take unto you Mary, your wife ; for that which is con- 
ceived in her is of the Holy Ghost; and she shall bring forth a 
son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his peo- 
ple from their sins." Joseph seems to have been addressed by 
the title, " Son of David," as if the angel would assure him that 
though he came of royal blood, there should be no humiliation to 
him by taking Mary to wife. 

Joseph rose from his sleep next day and did as he had been 
bidden in the dream, taking his bride to his own home and await- 
ing the unfolding of events. 

In due time the great event occurred. Jesus was born. 

The date and the place of this Great Birth are important and 
intimately connected. Before other things let us strive to settle, 
as nearly as we may, the question of the time of 
the advent of Jesus to the world. Examination of 

/-. -i i tiio the chronology. 

Can we ascertain the year, the month, the day ? 

Christmas has been celebrated in the Latin Church, as the anni- 
versary of the birth of Jesus, on the 25th of December, and the 
year has been marked as the 754th after the founding of the city 



24 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESU8. 



of Rome.* The tradition of the Latin Church first appears in 
the writings of Augustine, who was born a.d. 354, too late to make 
Uim any authority on such a question. 

It is now well ascertained that the point from which the Christian 

Era is dated is several years later than the actual 

xamma ion o j^^ f C nr j s t. He was born in some year B.C., 

the year. ° ' 

Before Christ. Let the reader recollect this. 
It may seem anomalous to have any other day for the Chris- 
tian epoch than the very day on which Jesus was really born ; 
but as the chronology of Christendom had gone on for years 
before thorough investigation was made, to whatever results 
they lead it would now clearly be impracticable to rectify the 
error. The confusion caused by adding the years and months 
and days necessary to conform the first of January, 1871, for 
instance, with the real time would be a much greater inconveni- 
ence than following the received chronology, especially when we 
shall show that the most recent researches and studies exhibit an 
error even in that of at least one year, and probably more. And 
this is not a matter affecting any man's faith, but is a mere ques- 
tion of historical inquiry. If even it could be shown that the 
evangelist Luke is inexact, his want of exactness is easily 
explained, and is of no manner of importance for the object 
which he had in view. 



In Luke iii. 1, it is recorded that in the fifteenth year of the 

reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, 

and Herod tetrarch of Galilee, John began to 

f T'b 66 " 1 yea P reacn 5 an( i that at that time " Jesus began to be 

about thirty years of age? Luke iii. 23. The 

word "about" must allude to something less than one year, and 

i af er to months or weeks. The " fifteenth year of the reign of 

Tiberius Caesar " is now to be fixed. 

Tiberius Caesar was admitted to joint rule by Augustus some 
time before that emperor's death, at which time Tiberius became 
sole emperor. Does Luke's date refer to his associate reign or 
his solitary reign ? That it refers to the former is shown thus : 



* According to Dionysius Exiguus, in 
the 6th century. One fact shows that 
is at least four years too late, namely, 
that Herod died, as Josephus shows (An- 



tiquities, xviii. 9, § 3, xvii. 8, § 4), in 
u.c. 750, and Jesus was born before th« 
death of Herod. 



BIRTH OF JESUS I ITS DATE. 



25 



(1.) The public ministry of Jesus must, at the lowest calcula- 
tion, have covered between two and three years, as not less than 
three, and probably four, Passovers occurred. (See John ii. 13 ; 
vi. 4; xii. 1 ; v. 1.) It may have occupied more than three. Let 
us say two, of which we are certain. 

(2.) That public ministry closed, as all admit, during the con- 
sulship of the two Gemini, and that is fixed, as all agree, in the 
fifteenth year after the death of Augustus. Then Jesus could not 
have begun his ministry in the fifteenth year of the sole reign of 
Tiberius, and it must have been in the fifteenth year of some 
other reign, that is, of his associate reign. 

When did that associate reign begin ? 

Comparing Suetonius with Dio Cassius, it appears that Tiberius 
returned to Rome, triumphed, and dedicated temples in the consul- 
ship of M. Emilius Lepidus and T. Statilius Taurus,* in the month 
of January. It would seem that this is the time of his probable 
accession to joint power Avith Augustus. Indeed Suetonius says : 
".Not long after (the dedication of the temples) a law being pro- 
posed by the senate that he (Tiberius) should administer the 
government of the provinces in common with Augustus, he 
departed into Illyricum." It must have been, at longest, only a 
few weeks after January of this year. Let us say February. 
Now the consulship of M. Emilius Lepidus and T. Statilius 
Taurus was in the third year before the death of Augustus. 
When did Augustus die? On the 19th of 
August, in the year in which Sextus Appu- 
leius and Sextus Pompeius were consuls. What 
a.d. was that % 

From some ascertained coincidence of an event in some con- 
sulship with a certain year in our era modern chronologers have 
reckoned back and arranged the consular tables so that we have : 
.. £.. j M. Aur. Yerus Anton. Cses., called the Philosopher. 



Death of Augus- 
tus. 



L. ^Elius Aur. Yerus Cses., called " Commodus." 



In copying and otherwise it seems that some confusion has come 



are very important in 
these investigations. The Romans kept 
their dates by consulships as we do by 
the "Year of our Lord." The preser- 
vation of the succession of consuls was 
of the utmost importance in their chro- 
nology. It is as if we had no A.D., and 



the English dated everything by the 
year of their reigning sovereign, and the 
Americans by the year of their Presi- 
dent. The Fasti among the Romans 
were marbles in which were carved this 
succession of consuls. Fragments of 
these marbles still exist. 



A.D. 16(M 



A.D. 161 



I 



26 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

in at this point of the chronological calculation, and two sets oi 
consuls have been shrunk into one year. The authority of three 
lists (those of Cassiodorus, Victorius, and the Paschal Chronicle) 
makes two years, while that of one list (Idatius) makes one year. 
It is safer to follow the stronger authority, and by correcting the 
mistakes of copyists, the consular list at this particular period is 
restored thus : 

' T. El. Aur. Antoninus " Pius," Emperor (who died 

this year), and 
M. El. Aurelius Anton., the Philosopher (who suc- 
ceeded him). 
M. El. Aurelius Anton., the Philosopher, and 
L. Aur. Ant. Yerus, called " Commodus." 
It will be perceived that this pushes back all the other consul- 
ships one year, so that those for 160 must be placed in a.d. 159, 
and so all the way back through the list. The consulship of 
Sextus Appuleius and Sextus Pompeius, usually entered a.d. 14 
(Julian Period 4727), must be one year earlier. 

The result is that Augustus died on the 19th of August, a.d. 
13:* the associate reign of Tiberius began three years before 
this, namely, a.d. 10, in February : in the fifteenth year of that 
reign — between February, a.d. 24, and February, a.d. 25 — Jesus 
reached his thirtieth year. This is marked, because it was the 
legal time of entering upon the Jewish priesthood, and was the 
age at which Jesus actually began his public ministry. From 
that date deduct thirty years, and the conclusion is reached that 
Jesus was born between the Februaries of the years 6 and 7 
before the beginning of the Vulgar Era. 

Seeing that this event has been by different writers assigned to 

every month in the year, can we ascertain the very day f If not, 

let us see how nearly it can be approximated. The Latin Church 

has kept the 25th of December; the Greek Church originally 

observed the 6th of January, but subsequently came over to the 

Latin calendar. Neither date has any conclusive authority. 

According to Josephus, Jerusalem was taken m the second year 

of the reign of Vespasian, on the 8th day of Sep- 

E !r in f i° n ° f tember, a.d. 70, which was in the year of the 

month and day. . ■ ' ' _ 1 ^ _ 

city (a.tt.) 823, and the temple was destroyed on 

* Be careful to notice that this is | the actual birth of Jesus. 
the Vulgar Era, not an era dated from 



BIRTH OF JESUS J ITS DATE. 



27 



the 4th of August. According to the Jewish Mishna — compiled in 
Palestine toward the close of the second century — on that day 
the first sacerdotal class of the twenty-four which officiated in 
rotation, each a week (1 Chron. xxiv., and Nehemiah xii.), entered 
upon their duties. Computing the number of sacerdotal cycles 
between a.d. 70 and b.c 8, we ascertain * that on the 4th day of 
August, b.c 8, there were nine weeks and five days needed to 
complete the cycle. Add these to 4th of August and we reach 
October 11 as the recommencement of the cycle. The eighth class, 
that to which, according to Luke i. 5, Zacharias belonged, would 
enter upon duty on the forty-ninth day after October 11 ; that 
is, November 29 (b.c. 8). A simple arithmetical calculation shows 
that Zacharias must have been serving on the following days : 

B.c. 9. .August 12 I b.c. 8. .July 14 I b.c. 7. .May 16 

b.c. 8. .January 27 | b.c. 8. .November 29 I b.c. 7. .October 31 

Add to these dates fourteen months and twenty-two days, by 
which allowance is made of seven days for Zacharias' s ministry, 
five months and fifteen days for Elizabeth's time before the Annun- 
ciation, and the usual period of nine months for Mary's time, from 
the Annunciation to the birth of Jesus, and you have the follow 
ing table : 



b.c. 8. .November 3 I b.c 7. .October 
b.c. 7. .April 18 1 b.c 6. .February 



6 I b.c 6. .August 7 

20 I b.c 5.. January 22 



These six dates are all that seem possible on the calculation by 
the courses of the priests. It is not necessary to point out objec- 
tions to any single date, as our previous calculations have shown 
that it must have been b.c. 6. Was it February 20 or August 7 ? 
To decide between these dates we are helped by the statement in 
Luke ii. 8, that at the Nativity "there were in the same country 
shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks 
by night." Would this have been in the month of February % In 
Buhle's Economical Calendar of Palestine (it may be found as 
the 454th of the fragments in the 4to edition of Calmet), which 
contains a very satisfactory account of the weather for each 
month, it is shown that February is rainy and snows are frequent 



* In this way : The interval between 
the dates is 77 years, being 28,124 days, 
being 4,017 weeks and 5 days, which, 



divided by 24, gives 166 cycles, with 9 
weeks and 5 days over. 



28 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



in the southern part. It was not a month for shepherds to be 
watching their flocks at night in the open air. Nor is it probable 
that the enrolment which was had at the imperial order would 
have been assigned to so distressing a portion of the year, nor 
that Mary, in her condition, conld have taken this journey in 
February. 

The 7 th day of August, b.c. 6 (a.tj.c. 747), is the nearest approach 
we can make to the date of the birth of Jesus. Within a fort- 
night of that day this great event most probably 
Jesus born pro- occurre d. 

BC q In reaching this date I have used the most 

direct and most trustworthy mode of calculation, 
and yet find only a probable conclusion, after having read an im- 
mense amount of matter on this question. It is annoying to see 
learned men use the same apparatus of calculation and reach the 
most diverse results.* It is bewildering to attempt a reconcilia- 
tion of these varying calculations. It may be proper to consider 
the other data used in these calculations, and give the reader the 
benefit of the latest investigations. 
It is recorded in Matthew ii. 1-10: 



" Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the 

king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where 

is he that is bom King of the Jews ? for we have seen his 

proximation. ** &P " star * n tne east ' an ^ are come to worship him. When He- 
rod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and 
all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and 
scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be 
born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea : for thus it is written 
by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least 
among the princes of Juda : for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall 
rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise 
men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent 
them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child ; 
and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and 
worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed ; and, lo, 
the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood 
over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with 
exceeding great joy." 



* For example : the birth of our Lord 
is placed in B.C. 1 by Pearson and Hug; 
B.C. 2 by Scaliger; B.C. 3 by Baronius 
ind Paulus ; B.c. 4 by Bengel, Wieseler, 



and Greswell; B.C. 5 by Usher and Pe- 
tavius; B.C. 6 by Strong, Luvin, and 
Clark; B.C. 7 by Ideler and Sancle- 
mente. 



BIRTH OF JESUS : ITS DATE. 29 

" The data in this passage furnish little help towards precision, 
but do fix the exterior limit of the Nativity. "We learn from it 
that Christ was born before the death of He- 

-i jttjj*j' j* t i- Date of Herod's 

rod y and Herod died, according to Josepnus , , 
(Ant. xvii. 8, § 1), 'having reigned thirty-four 
years from the time that he had procured Antigonus to be slain ; 
but thirty-seven from the time he had been declared king by the 
Romans ' (see also B. J. i. 33, § 8). His appointment as king, 
according to the same writer (Ant. xiv. 14, § 5), coincides with 
the 184th Olympiad, and the consulship of C. Domitius Calvinus 
and C. Asinius Pollio. It appears that he was made king by the 
joint influence of Antony and Octavius ; and the reconciliation 
of these two men took place on the death of Fulvia, in the year 
714. Again, the death of Antigonus and the siege of Jerusalem, 
which form the basis of calculation for the thirty-four years, co- 
incide (Joseph. Ant. xiv. 16, § 4) with the consulship of M. Yip- 
sanius Agrippa and L. Caninius Gallus, that is, with the year of 
Rome 717 ; and occurred in the month Sivan (= June or July). 
From these facts we are justified in placing the death of Herod 
in a.tj.c. 750. Those who place it one year later overlook the 
mode in which Josephus reckons Jewish reigns. Wieseler shows 
by several passages that he reckons the year from the month 
Nisan to Nisan, and that he counts the fragment of a year at 
either extreme as one complete year. In this mode, thirty-four 
years, from June or July, 717, would apply to any date between 
the first of Msan, 750, and the first of Msan, 751. And thirty- 
seven years from 714 would apply likewise to any date within the 
same termini. Wieseler finds facts confirmatory of this in the 
dates of the reigns of Herod Antipas and Archelaus (see his 
Chronologische Synqpse, p. 55). Between these two dates 
Josephus furnishes means for a more exact determination. Just 
after Herod's death the Passover occurred (Nisan 15th), and upon 
Herod's death Archelaus caused a seven-days' mourning to be 
kept for him (Ant. xvii. 9, § 3, xvii. 8, § 4) ; so that it would 
appear that Herod died somewhat more than seven days before 
the Passover in 750, and therefore in the first few days of the 
month Nisan, a.tj.c. 750." — Smith's Dictionary (Hurd & Hough- 
ton's edition), p. 1381). 

It has also been noticed that Josephus mentions (Ant. xvii. 6, 
4 fin.) an eclipse of the moon not long before the death of He- 



30 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

rod, which by calculation can have been only that which occurred 
on the night between March 12 and March 13, a.u.c 750. Now, 
as Jesus was born before the death of Herod, it follows that the 
Dionysian era, which corresponds to a.u.c. 754, is at least four 
years too late. 

But the question arises, How long before Herod's death did the 
Nativity occur ? We can approximate this only by allowing suffi- 
cient space for all the events which are recorded, 

Astronomical . . . „ . __„. _. _ , _ y 

calculations. namely, the journey or the Wise Men and the 

sojourn of Joseph and Mary in Egypt. An as- 
tronomical calculation by Kepler found a conjunction of Jupiter 
and Saturn, in the sign of the Pisces, a.u.c. 747, which is before 
the vulgar era 6, the date I assigned to the Birth. But Kepler 
found the same conjunction again in the spring of the next year, 
with the planet Mars added, and from this would place the Birth 
in 748. But Ideler, on the same kind of calculation, places it in 
747. Although these calculations favor the date which, for other 
reasons, I believe to be correct, I place no great reliance upon 
them, because we have no certainty that the star mentioned in 
Matthew has the same time as the celestial phenomenon found by 
astronomical calculations. The coincidence, however, must be 
acknowledged as very interesting. 

In Matthew ii. 16, it is said that Herod, when he saw that the 
Wise Men had mocked him, was very angry, and sent and slew all 

Killing- of the the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all 
children in Beth- the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, 
lehem. « according to the time which he had diligently 

inquired of the Wise Men." How long before Herod's death was 
this ? We have no means of knowing. But it was some time. 
And that time must be added to the two years which he had 
learned by diligent inquiry of the Wise Men had elapsed before 
this slaughter and the time they had seen the star. Then, the 
Nativity occurred more than two years before another period, 
which period was some time before the spring or summer of 
a.u.c 750. If these two undetermined periods amount to one 
year, then the Nativity is placed somewhere in the summer of 
A..U.C. 747, the time reached by the date assigned in this work. 
But this is presented as only an approximation. 

Luke (ii. 1-7) says : " It came to pass in those days that there 
we fit out a decree from Csesar Augustus that all the world should 



BIRTH OF JESUS ! ITS DATE. 



Difficult pas- 



be taxed ; and this taxing was first made when Cyrenius [Quirinus] 
was governor [that is, proconsul or lord-lieuten- The Taxin ^ 
ant] of Syria ; and all went to be taxed, every 
one to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Gali- 
lee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of 
David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house, 
and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, 
being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were 
there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 
And she brought forth her first-born son." . . . 

This is admitted to be one of the most perplexing passages in 
the Evangelists. Dean Alford thinks it unmanageable. Neander 
thinks it may be inexact. The destructive critics 
have made the most of it as affecting the author- 
ity of the Evangelists. It does not seem to 
help us in settling the date of the Nativity, but as it will 
help us to something much more important than the mere 
date, we must consider its difficulties, which are simply chrono- 
logical. 

1. It is said that there is no record in any other history of a 
census of the whole Roman empire under Augustus. It has 
been argued in reply that the Legis Actiones Objections :— 
and their abrogation were quite as important in No other history 
respect to the early Roman history as the Census of this census - 
of the Empire was to the latter, and as Livy, Dionysius, and 
Polybius make no record of the former, we are not to be sur- 
prised that later historians do not mention the latter. Our knowl- 
edge of the former is derived from a law-book, namely, " The 
Institutes of Gains : " if any perfect copy of a similar law book, 
covering the times of the alleged census, made no mention of it, 
then the argument from silence (argumentum de tacittwnitate) 
might have some force.* It is to be remembered that Suetonius 
and Tacitus are very brief, and that in the history by Dio Cassius 
there is a gap of ten years, from a.tt.c 747 to 757, the very 
period in which Luke says the census was begun. The argument 
from silence would prove that no important events occurred in 



* Huschke in Wieseler, p. 78. The 
■ame author says: "If Suetonius in 
his life [of Augustus] does not mention 
this census, neither does Spartian in his 



life of Hadrian devote a single syllable 
to the edictum perpetuum, which, in 
later times, has chiefly adorned th« 
name of that emperor. " 



O'A THE B1ETH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

the long reign of Augustus, except those which the fragmentary 
history of the times has preserved. 

But it is known that the subtle Augustus was centralizing the 
empire, and that about five years before the birth of Jesus all 
the procurators of the empire were brought over to his control. 
(Dion. Cass., liii. 32.) From several sources we learn that esti- 
mates of the empire were being made about this time, enrolments 
which required many years for their completion. 

And unless some proof can be produced to show that no such 
census was actually had, it is to be borne always in mind that, 
apart from all notion of inspiration, as m,ere human authority 
Luke is,, to say the least, as good as Tacitus, Philo, Josephus, or 
any other ancient historian whose works have been preserved. 

2. It is said that if such a census had been ordered it would 
not have included Judea, which was not yet a Boman province. 

It would not I n re pty> reference is made to a passage in Taci- 
have included Ju- tus. Augustus directed, as we learn, a " brevia- 
dea - rium totius imperii " to be made, in which, accord 

ing to Tacitus, " Opes publican continebantur : quantum civium 
sociorumque in armis, quot classes, regna, provincise, tributa ant 
vectigalia et necessitates ac largitiones." (Tacit. Ann., i. 11.) 

If the " soeiorum," "regna," and " provincise " did not 
elude such a principality as Herod's, it would be difficult to lei. n 
to what these words are to be applied. Moreover, the -connection 
of Judea with the province of Syria, first established by Pompey, 
was never considered as dissolved by Herod's elevation to the 
throne. 

3. It is objected that the Roman mode of taking the census 
was according to actual residence. But, even if that was so, and 

even if the census of Augustus did not neces- 
mode sarily embrace Judea, we know that Herod at this 

time had state reasons for desiring to propitiate 
the emperor, and might on that account have ordered a census ; 
which, as he did it as of his own motion, he might prefer to take 
in the Jewish way, that is, in the place whence the family sprung, 
rather than in the Roman manner, that is, in the place of actual 
residence. Or even if Herod had simply proclaimed a census, it 
is quite easy to see that the Jews would prefer to go to the place 
of nativity, as that had been their custom. 

4. Again, it is objected that the state of Mary's health would 



BIBTH OF JESUS I ITS DATE. 33 

have precluded such a journey. It is answered, that if the enrol 
ment was made by tribes, a Jew of the house and Mary > s h ea ith. 
lineage of David would make great exertions and 
sacrifices to present himself in his proper place and secure the 
recognition of his position. This motive would operate equally 
upon Joseph and Mary, as both were of the family of David. 
Quiet women have enormous reservoirs of determination. When 
one of them sets her heart on any course it is only an insur- 
mountable obstacle that can divert her. 

5. Another objection is that Luke seems to say that this census 
did not take place until at least ten years later. (Luke ii. 2.) 
This brings us to the real difficulty in the passage. It is an ob- 
jection urged by Dr. Strauss, but not by him fairly put. {Leben 
J~esu, i. iv. 32.) Let us examine this. 

Luke makes two statements : (1.) That Augustus decreed a 
taxing. (2.) That this taxing was made when Cyrenius was gov- 
ernor of Syria. Let the distinction between the 

statements be noticed. The first has been estab- 

ments seem con- 

lished above, as I think, conclusively. The his- tradictory. 
torian Luke asserts it, and there is nothing in 
history, so far as we now know, to cast the slightest discredit on 
it. The difficulty is to reconcile the second statement of Luke 
with his first, or to clear away somehow the difficulties of the 
passage. Cyrenius was governor twelve years after the date of 
the Nativity assigned above, and this passage seems to make the 
birth of Jesus to have occurred during his governorship. 

The following explanations are tendered : 

(a.) Herod undertook the census after the Jewish form, accord- 
ing to the imperial decree, but died before it was finished. The 
Evangelist knew that as soon as a census was 

t .,, -r . , , . ; How explained, 

mentioned persons conversant with Jewish history 

would think at once of the census which was had about twelve 
years later, after the banishment of Archelaus, which was notori- 
ously a Roman census, and caused an insurrection (Josephus, Ant. 
*cviii. 1, § 1), and therefore he added the second verse, which is 
equivalent to this : " No census was actually completed then : and I 
knew that the first Roman census was had after the banishment 
of Archelaus ; but the decree went out much earlier, namely, in 
the time of Herod." This is the explanation of Dr. Thomson, 
Archbishop of York. 
3 



84: the smiH Am) childhood of jestts. 

(b.) Cyrenius, it is said, may have been twice governor. Prof. 
A. W. Zumpt, of Berlin, has published a work entitled Com- 
mentatio de Syria Romanorum provincia a Ccesare Augusto ad 
T. Vespasianum, in which, by a long course of argument, he 
shows that it is probable Cyrenius was twice governor ; but then 
he makes his first term of office too late by several years to agree 
with our date of the Nativity. Lardner (i. 329) suggests, which 
is perhaps better, that he was* a commissioner extraordinary sent 
from Rome for the special purpose of superintending this census ; 
and we learn from Tacitus that he had a special fitness for this 
kind of work, and was at this time absent in the East. 

(c.) Helief is sought on the side of philology. The passage in 

the Original (Luke ii. 2) is, avrr] a7roypa<pr) lyivero TrpwTT] rjy€fxovcvovT6s 

tfjs Svpta; Kvprjvtov.* The word eyeWo may be translated "was 
completed," as much as if Luke had said, " It was begun as an 
enrolment just before the birth of Jesus, and completed years 
after, under Cyrenius." Or, -v-purr) may be translated " before," 
and then the passage would mean, " this enrolment took place 
before (that better known enrolment, when) Quirinus was gover- 
nor of Syria." (See Alford's Greek Testament, in loco.) For 
similar examples in Greek literature De Pressense refers to Tho- 
luck (GlaubwurdigJceit, p. 181), and confines himself to citing a 
specimen of the same construction in (John i. 15) the words of 
John the Baptist, r P z T 6<; fxov rj Vy "he was before me." If this be 
received it ends all difficulties. 

Let it be remembered, that this is not a proved inaccuracy in 
Luke, it is only a difficulty, an obscurity. No man has shown 

that Augustus Caesar could not have ordered this 
y an o scu- cengus ^ nor ^^ Qy ren ius absolutely could not have 

been governor when it was in process of execution. 
We know that he was governor years after the Nativity, and 
with that gubernatorial term we have been striving to reconcile 
Luke's statements. The whole difficulty arises from our igno- 
rance, not from Luke's proved inaccuracy. All honest historical 
inquirers should admit that Luke, who lived near the time of 
what he narrates, is at least quite as competent a historian as the 
modern Dr. Strauss, or the modern M. Penan. 



* In this text I have followed the 
Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest authority, 
in which irpwrr] is not separated from 



riyenovevovTos, but immediately precedei 
it. 



BIRTH OF JESUS I ITS DATE. 



35 



This passage has almost no importance in respect to the date 
of the Nativity, and therefore I did not discuss it in that connec- 
tion. It is important as giving ns a historical reason for the 
birth in the city of Bethlehem of the child whose parents were 
inhabitants of Nazareth. To a Jewish reader this is vital, as 
those whom he treats as prophets had plainly pointed to Bethle- 
hem as the piace of the birth of the Great Deliverer. 

Jesus, then, was born in Bethlehem, about the beginning of 
August, b.c. 6, A.TJ.C. 747. 




CHAPTEK III, 



PLACE OF THE BERTH: THE CTRCUMCTSION. 



Bethlehem, the name signifying " House of Bread," is one of 

the oldest towns in Palestine, having been in existence before 

Jacob's return to his native land. It is still ex- 

Matt i ; Luke i stm p. As to { ts> l oca ti n there have never been 

li. Bethlehem, ° ..,.,., , -_ . 

the birthplace of doubts. It is identical with the present Beit- 
Jesus. Lahm, " House of Flesh," of the Arabs. It is six 

miles, and two hours' travel, south from Jerusalem, 
east of the main road to Hebron. (Robinson's ^Researches in 
Palestine, vol. ii., p. 159.) 





BETHLEHEM EPHEATH. 



The original name of the town was Epheath, or Epheatah. 
In Micah v. 2, it is called Bethlehem-Epheatah. Its first 



PLACE OF THE BIRTH : THE CIRCUMCISION. 



37 



fame came to it from its being the birthplace of David, who, 
however, did nothing to advance it, even after his elevation to 
the throne. His ancestor Boaz had possessions here, and in some 
of the meadows in sight of the town Ruth gleaned. But it never 
rose to the dignity of a capital. The birth of Jesus has made it 
to be known to the whole world. Since that event tradition has 
never lost sight of Bethlehem. Justin Martyr visited it in the 
second century ; Origen in the third ; afterwards Eusebius, Jerome, 
the Bordeaux Pilgrim, and thousands of others. The Emperor 
Hadrian planted a grove of Adonis on the spot, to desecrate it. 
This grove kept up the identification. It remained from 135 
to 315 a.d. About a.d. 330, Constantine or the Empress Helena 
erected a church which remains to this day. In the twelfth cen- 
tury it was elevated into an episcopal see. There is shown a cave 
in which Jesus is said to have been born ; but the precise spot can- 
not now be known, and it seems absurd to suppose that cattle 
were kept twenty feet under ground. But we know the town.* 



* The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem be- 
ing coincident with the prophecies of the 
birthplace of the Messiah, the destruc- 
tive critics attack it as being a false 
statement ; but it is observable that no 
one has proved its incorrectness, nor 
even presented anything worth calling 
an argument. For instance, Dr. Strauss 
(Book i. 31) says: "But the opposite 
hypothesis as to the original dwelling- 
place of his parents, from which these 
Evangelists start in the accounts they 
give, shows that they are not following 
any historical authority, but simply a 
dogmatic conclusion, drawn from the 
passage in the prophet Micah, v. 1. " Can 
such modes mislead thinking men ? A 
historian says that two people, husband 
and wife, live in New York, but finding 
it important to go to London in person 
on or before a given day, to attend to mat- 
ters of great importance, the wife is 
theie delivered of a son, the distinguished 
subject of the historian's biography, and 
who afterwards spends a great part of 
bis life in New York. Some subsequent 
critic says: "Nay, but he was born in 
New York, for does not the historian 



' start ' with that as ' the original dwell- 
ing-place of his parents ? ' " Such a 
critic would equal Dr. Strauss. But then 
Dr. Strauss proceeds on the theory that 
he was a native of Nazareth. Why not 
say he was born at Damascus ? On what 
authority do these writers assume that 
he was born in Nazareth ? On the au- 
thority of the Evangelists. Dr. Strauss 
makes fifteen references to the four 
Evangelists, which, if the reader will 
consult, will be found to contain no state- 
ment whatever as to his birthplace, but 
simply speak of Jesus as a Nazarene or a 
Galilean. Two (Matt, xxvi 69, 71) are 
the accusations made against Peter by 
women, that he was an associate of " Je- 
sus of Galilee," or " Jesus of Nazareth." 
A third is the speech of the unclean 
spirit (Mark i. 24), " What have we to do 
with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? " 
A fourth is Mark's account of what Mat- 
thew gives in chapter xxvi. A fifth is 
Luke xviii. 37, where the blind man in- 
quires the meaning of the noise, and the 
multitude tell him that " Jesus oi Naza- 
reth passes by. " This is the amount of 
Dr. Strauss' s argument. 



38 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



It lies on the eastern and northeastern brow of a ridge, run 
ning east and west, from the top of which there is an exten- 



The utter want of fairness is seen in 
three ways : 1. In the case supposed 
above, of an American born of American 
parents in London, his subsequently re- 
turning and being called ' ' Mr. Blank, of 
New York," or " Mr. Blank, the Ameri- 
can," would certainly not prove that he 
was born in New York, and most certainly 
not prove that he was not born in Lon- 
don. 2. Take his reference to Luke. To 
prove that Jesus was born in Nazareth he 
produces the reply of a miscellaneous 
crowd to a beggar. They called him a 
"Nazarene." But if that passage in 
Luke be good authority we must take the 
whole, what the beggar said as well as 
what the multitude said. The beggar 
cried out, "Jesus, son of David, have 
mercy on me." Then Jesus was gener- 
ally reputed to be the son of David. But 
this Dr. Strauss denies, and because he 
is following ' ' simply a dogmatic conclu- 
sion drawn from " his theory of myths, 
he is anxious to show that Jesus was not 
born in Bethlehem, the city of David, 
and was not the son of David at all, and 
was not believed to be the son of David. 
(Leben Jesu, chap. ii. ) But his own au- 
thority confutes him. 3. He cites Luke 
xxiv. 19 to prove that Jesus was born in 
Nazareth. Does Luke, in that passage 
or any where else, say so ? Not at all. 
But this same Luke, Dr. Strauss's wit- 
ness, does say, distinctly, ii. 6, 7, that 
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 

In all this there is nothing supernatu- 
ral, so that Dr. Strauss might not answer 
that we had gone out of the region of 
realities. It is purely a matter of fact. 
If Dr. Strauss denied the whole, and 
said, " No man knows where Jesus was 
born," it would be another thing. But 
he affirms that he was born in Nazareth. 
It was no more miraculous to be born in 
Bethlehem than in Nazareth. But it 
does connect Jesus with the house of 



David, and does connect him with what 
the Jews regarded as a prophecy, and so 
obstinate is Dr. Strauss in his adherence 
to his naturalistic theory, that no fair 
reader of his book can fail to see that 
there never was a theologic zealot more 
bent to his creed than Dr. Strauss to his 
dogma. But historians must avoid all 
dogmatism. 

M. Renan (chap, ii.) says distinctly, 
" Jesus was born at Nazareth." Why 
not say that he was born at Capernaum ? 
What is his authority ? He has none but 
Matthew, Mark, and John! He cites 
Matthew (xiii. 54, et seq.). The reader 
will see upon inspection that there is not 
the slightest allusion whatever to the 
birthplace of Jesus, or of any other per- 
son, in any portion of this chapter. It 
simply speaks of the return of Jesus to 
his own country, but does not say where 
that country is ; and if it be assumed to 
be Nazareth, that would not prove that 
he was born there, as thousands of men 
who were born in Europe speak of Amer 
ica as their country, since it has been 
their place of residence for many years. 
The fact that in manhood Jesus should 
speak of Nazareth as his country, and 
others should so speak of him, has no 
bearing on the question of the place of 
his nativity. But how does M. Renan 
know that this is a fact ? On the au- 
thority of Matthew. Then Matthew is 
his witness, and he says explicitly that 
Jesus was born in, Bethlehem (ii. 1). 

Again, M. Renan cites Mark, and refers 
to vi. 1, where it is written : " And he 
went out from thence and came into his 
own country." No mention is made of 
any town in the whole passage. And 
this is cited to prove that Jesus was bom 
in Nazareth ! ! 

M. Renan' s last authority is John i. 
45, 46, where it is said that Philip found 
Nathanael and said: "We have found 



PLACE OF THE BIKTH I THE CIRCUMCISION. 



39 



Bive view toward the east and south, in the direction of Jericho, 
the Dead Sea, and the mountains of Moab. In the time of the 
captivity there was an inn, or caravanserai, close to Bethlehem, 
which appears to have been a point of departure for Egypt. 
(Jeremiah xli. 17.) Perhaps this was the very inn where Jesus 
was born. The prophet Micah (v. 2) had said of this city of 
David : " Thou Bethlehem-Ephratah ! though thou be little 
among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall he come unto 
me to be the Ruler of Israel ; whose goings forth have been from 
old, from the days of eternity ! " 

It is said that the inn or caravanserai in Bethlehem was so 
crowded that Joseph and Mary were obliged to find lodging in 
the stable. There Jesus was born, the first child of Mary.* 

It would seem that his birth occurred in the night. There 

him of whom Moses in the law, and the 
prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, 
the son of Joseph. " Would any man in 
a court of law bring such testimony for- 
ward to establish the birthplace of an 
individual ? It might prove that Jesus 
resided at Nazareth when he was about 
thirty years of age, but it has no bearing 
whatever upon the question of the place 
of his nativity. A man having resided 
in New York a few years, called to make 
affidavit, might describe himself gener- 
ally as "of New York," unless the doc- 
uments were known by him to be about 
to be used on the question of the place 
of his nativity or citizenship. The fact 
that John says that Philip spoke of Jesus 
at thirty as being ' ' of Nazareth, " is 
nothing to the point ; but two historians, 
one having had personal intercourse for 
years with the subject of his biography, 
say distinctly that he was born in Beth- 
lehem, and that settles the question until 
better evidence can be produced showing 
that he was born elsewhere. 

Of a piece with this is M. Kenan's 
Btatement in Life of Jesus, chap. xv. : 
" The family of David had become, it 
would seem, long since extinct," when 
M. Renan, as one of his notes shows, 
knew that the doctors Hillel and Gama- 
liel were reputed of the race of David, 



and Dr. Strauss' s reference to Luke 
xviii. brings up a passage in which a 
blind beggar by the way-side salutes Je- 
sus as the " son of David," no one of 
the multitude present objecting, show- 
ing that Jesus was publicly and notori- 
ously recognized as of that race and 
lineage. 

It is to be noticed how unreliable are 
the quotations and references of those 
who attack the Evangelists. A great par- 
ade is made in foot-notes and parentheses. 
They look like authority. The shrewd 
writers knew that not one in a thousand 
of their readers will consult the passages 
referred to. Take this instance: M. 
Renan positively names the place of the 
birth of Jesus, and then in a foot-note 
quotes three distinct ancient authors, 
and gives chapter and verse. That looks 
like settling the question. But an exam- 
ination shows that not one of these au- 
thors alludes in these places to the sub- 
ject, and one of them, who knew Jesua 
personally, positively affirms that he was 
born in another 'place ! 

* Mary appears to have been the 
mother of several children, sons and 
daughters, younger than Jesus. Four 
sons are named, and daughters are al- 
luded to in Matthew xiii. 55, and Mark 
vi. 3. 



40 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



were shepherds watching their flocks in one of the pasture grounds, 
which may still be seen near Bethlehem.* To them appeared 




INN. CAEAVANSERAI. KHAN. 



a vision, and they believed that God told them not to fear, that 
there was born that day, in the city of David, 
j ' Jesus, who was the Anointed Lord, the Messiah. 

That they might be assured, it was told them that 
they should And him in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger, 
one of those exterior stalls usually attached to caravanserais. Im- 
mediately there burst upon the ears of the shepherds a chorus 
sung by multitudes of voices, saying, " Glory to God in the highest, 
on earth peace, good will to men." 

If it be inquired how this statement came into history, the 
answer is, that it is probable that Luke, when he came to writing 
the biography of his Master, made diligent search for all he 
could find of the early life of Jesus, and in that search received 
from the lips of one of the shepherds his simple account of the 
transaction. This sounds like the narrative of an eye-witness. 
It may not have literal accuracy, but it has been noticed how re- 
markably free it is from all materialism, how very pure and ele-., 
vated is the statement of the transaction. It occurred as any well- 
balanced mind might reasonably suppose it would, if the Great 
Father ever m?„de any such communication to men. 

The shepherds went to Bethlehem and found the place, the 
mother and the babe. Then they made known what they had 
heard in the plain, and returned rejoicing. 



* About a mile east of Bethlehem I lage of the Shepherds, 
there is a little village called the Vil- j . 



PLACE OF THE BERTH : THE CIRCUMCISION. 41 

Luke asserts that Mary's child was circumcised, according to 
the Levitical law, on the eighth day, and received 
the name of Jesus. t a*"™*" •* 

Jesus. 
The Mosaic law required the presentation to the 

Lord of every first-born male, but allowed children to be redeemed 

from exclusive devotion to religious pursuits by 

the payment of five shekels, which is about thirty . ^ su f pre ^ en e 

r J ' ^ in the temple. 

American gold dollars. See Levit. xii. 24 ; .Num- 
bers xviii. 15, 16. At the same time the parents were to offer a 
sacrifice of a pair of turtle-doves or young pigeons. (Leviticus 
xii. 8.) In this service consisted the legal purification of the 
mother. The rich offered a lamb ; the poor gave pigeons. Mary 
had only doves to bring. 

If this history had been written by an impostor he would have 
given a different turn to the story. These sacrifices imply sin. 
If Jesus be that Holy One from the birth, why were these offer- 
ings made % The straightforwardness of the story gives a gen- 
eral air of truthfulness to the whole narrative. There is no myth 
here. Mythical narratives elevate. This depresses. It places 
Jesus in the race of sinners. A writer of myths, as Neander 
suggests, would have brought in an angel to hinder Mary from 
submitting her child to a ceremony so unworthy his dignity. 

But here there appears strikingly that mingling of humiliation 
and glory which marks all the main passages of the life of Jesus. 
Amid the general spiritual declension of the 

T ,i . , j -i.j.i.1 i t i. i Simeon and Anna. 

J ews there existed a little band, not perhaps con- 
sociated so as to be called a society, but well known to one 
another, of those who made careful culture of the spiritual life, 
and who were waiting for some special revelation of mercy from 
Almighty God. Among these were two aged people, named 
Simeon and Anna, who looked earnestly for the coming of the 
Consoler of Israel. Simeon had received what he believed a 
divine intimation that he should not die before he had seen Je- 
hovah's Anointed. Moved by special spiritual impulse he came 
into the temple the very day of Mary's purification, which was forty 
days after the circumcision of the child. There was something 
in the babe which responded to the cry of the soul of Simeon. 
In him he recognized the long-looked- for Redeemer, and taking 
the child in his arms he broke into that rapture Tvhich the Chris- 
tian Church has preserved under the name of the Nunc Dimittis : 



42 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESTJS. 



" Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy 
word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before 
the face of all the peoples ; a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of 
Thy people Israel." (Luke ii. 29-32.) 

Although Jesus never recognized Joseph as his father, Luke 
speaks of Joseph and Mary together as the parents of Jesus, as 
they naturally would generally be taken to be, and says that this 
display of rapture, upon the part of Simeon, caused Joseph and 
Mary to marvel. Although Mary knew of Jesus's miraculous 
birth, each new wonder would impress her with fresh awe. Per- 
ceiving this, Simeon said to Mary, " Behold, this is set for the 
fall and rising again of many in Israel ; and for a sign to be 
spoken against ; and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul 
also, that out of many hearts evil thoughts may be revealed." 

In the words of Simeon we discover a feeling very much in 
advance of the general state of the Jewish mind. They display 
a softness, a hopefulness, and a liberality to which the hard Jew- 
ish heart of his day was generally a stranger. It contains the 
idea of development through struggle, a spread beyond the limits 
of Judaism, and a final triumph, which, while it should break up 
the exclusiveness of that ancient faith, should bestow upon it a 
greater glory than any of its anterior traditions. 

There was also one Anna,» " a prophetess," daughter of Pha 
nuel, of the tribe of Asher. In early womanhood she had mar 
ried. After seven years her husband died. She had been more 
than fifty years a widow, and had devoted herself to the tem- 
ple-service, not departing from the house of God, whom she 
served night and day with fasting and prayers. Coming in at 
this moment she joined Simeon's thanksgiving, and reported the 
case " to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." * 



* Schleiermacher's conjecture that the 
narrative came indirectly from Anna 
Beems plausible, seeing that she is more 



minutely described than Simeon, while 
Simeon's words are reported and her's 
are not. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

HIS FIRST TEARS. 

In the course of the year following the birth of Jesus, there 
arrived in Jerusalem a company of men described as the " Wise 
men from the East." (Matt. ii. 1.) Who were they ? 

Matthew calls them /i&yoi. By this name Magi the Greeks 
denoted the priests of Persia, just as we now speak of the Brah- 
mins of India. The Magi may have been a tribe, 
as Herodotus says thev were. To them among . * ' n ' } lslt 

" . J , " -r , T & of the Magi. 

the Persians, as to the Levites among the Jews, 
were intrusted all the public matters of religion. Their chiefs 
educated the prince ; they were royal counsellors and judges; they 
kept sacred traditions, and were thought to be able in various ways 
to divine the future, especially by watching the stars and by in- 
terpreting dreams. 

In the Roman Empire their name was generally assumed by 
magicians. The bad character of this class is clear from a decree 
of the Senate, which banished them from Pome in the year 16. 
Matthew used the term in its original, in its national and honor- 
able sense. This is certain from Herod's honorable treatment of 
these Magi. For in the whole world there were only two classes 
of men who would have been at all safe in coming to the capital 
of so jealous and bloody a tyrant with the question, "Where is he 
that is born King of the Jews ? " even though, as was the case with 
these Magi, they were understood to be seeking not for a spiritual, 
but for a temporal lord ; these two classes were citizens of Pome 
and subjects of the Parthian kings, and it would have been well 
that even such should have had more than a common claim to 
the protection of their governments. 

The Parthians, a small but warlike tribe, had gotten the upper 
hand in Persia. They were haughty and fierce, and so wielded 
the military power of that country as to make it dreaded even by 



44 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

the Romans. Herod's kingdom was exposed to their sudden 
inroads, and in his youth he had fled before them from Jerusalem. 
Against their anger his dependence even on the Roman power was 
no sufficient protection. In Babylonia, which was then a province 
of the Parthian Empire, was the city of Ctesiphon, on the river 
Tigris, one of several of the Parthian capitals. If these pilgrims 
came from Ctesiphon under a safe-conduct from the Parthian 
king, or were Magi of his court, Herod would not have dared 
to touch a hair of their heads, and would have been driven to 
some such policy as that to which he did resort. His treat- 
ment of them, especially his calling together the Sanhedrim, a 
body of men who in their sacerdotal and learned character much 
resembled them, proves that these Magi were men of very high 
rank, though they were not kings, as they were commonly held to 
be in the Middle Ages. This tradition seems to have grown very 
naturally out of their reception at Herod's court; and it was 
probably right in making them three in number, for this seems 
to be indicated by their presents to the infant Jesus. 

These Magi are described in our version as from " the East," 
and it is said they were in the East when they saw the Star. In 
the original the Greek word is the same in both places, but with 
such a difference in its form as would make the difference made in 
English by prefixing to the former the word far, which thus means 
the Far East. In some of the later Books of Hebrew Scripture 
Babylonia is called the East, and Persia lies next beyond it and in 
the same line. History, geography, and Hebrew usage leave no 
reasonable doubt that these strangers were Persians, and saw the 
Star in Babylonia, then a Persian province. 

Zoroaster, the famous Persian teacher of religion, who may have 
lived as far back as 1500 years before Christ, or not far from the 
time of Moses, was no idolater, and in the Bible the Persians are 
not classed with the heathen. Cyrus, the founder of the Persian 
Empire, was predicted by Isaiah (xliv. 24 ; xlv. 1-6) ; by him the 
Temple of God in Jerusalem, which had been burned by the king 
of Babylon, was ordered to be rebuilt ; and in his proclamation to 
that effect (Neh. i. 1-2) he acknowledges the God of the Persians 
and of the Hebrews to be the same Lord God of Heaven. Daniel 
was high in honor with this king ; and the Magi had an idea of a 
Sosiosh, or Redeemer, to come, that in certain respects was strik- 
ingly like his. From the time of Cyrus there were ever many 



HIS FIRST YEARS. 



45 



Jews in the Persian or Parthian country, and many things per 
taining to the Hebrew religion must have been well known to 
some of the Magi. 

But how did they come by their idea of the Star ? It was the 
universal belief of their times that the stars controlled the fates 
of men. The science that professed to look into their influences 
was called Astrology, and the Magi were astrologers. An ancient 
prophet, who was of the East, and who was not a Jew, had foretold 
a Jewish Messiah in the remarkable prediction, " There shall come 
a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel " 
(Numb. xxiv. 17), words then understood as foretelling that a new 
star would shine at his birth. In all Syria there was in their time 
an expectation that this personage would soon appear, which must 
have been common also to the Jews in the East and in the 
Far East. Within that very century, this belief, as Suetonius 
and Tacitus* state, had much to do with the uprising of 
the Jews against the Pom an s, in which Jerusalem perished. 
That which is further required to explain why they were so 
sure they saw the Star of the King of the Jews is furnished by 
a discovery of Kepler. He traced back the orbits of the 
planets, and found that near the time of the birth of Jesus cer- 
tain of the planets were in positions of great import in astrology ; 
Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction; that is, were very close 
to each other, and were in such a place in the zodiac that the like 
happens but once in 800 years ; and there were other astrological 
signs, all giving the idea that some great event was to come to 
pass in Judaea, as Kepler says, " according to the rules of Chaldean 
art as existing even till his own time." The new star therefore 
seemed to them the Star of the King of the Jews ; and it seems 
providential that Kepler enables us to see how the Magi came 
scientifically to this opinion, for the silence of the Bible as to any- 
thing supernatural in this proves it was not revealed to them. 

The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occurred twice, in the 
spring and in the autumn of the same year, and some have thought 
the Magi saw the earlier one when they were in the East, the later 
Dne when they left Jerusalem, and that it was in the direction of 



* Suetonius says : " Pererebuerat Ori- 
ente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse 
in fatis, ut eo tempore Judaea profecti 
rerumpotirentur." Tacitus says : "Plu- 



ribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacer- 
dotum liberis, contineri, eo ipso tempore 
fore ut valesceret Oriens, profectique 
Judaea rerum potirentur.'' 



46 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



Herod and the 
Magi 



Bethlehem, and so acted as a guide to them. But it is neither 
manly nor honest thus to evade the astronomical difficulties of 
their guidance by the star. It does not suit the words of Mat- 
thew, who says it was a star, and that it went before them ; and 
the latest astronomical researches, while they prove the accuracy 
of Kepler's discovery, prove that this conjunction was not in such 
a direction from Jerusalem that it could in any way have been 
a guide to Bethlehem.* 

Upon arriving in Jerusalem the Magi seem to have gone at once 
to the king's palace. At any rate, Herod learned that they were 
present in the city, and ascertained the object of 
their coming. "With his usual craftiness he called 
together the Sanhedrim to learn where, according 
to the sacred books of the Hebrews, the Messiah should be born. 
They recited to him the well-known prophecy in Micah (v. 2) 
pointing to Bethlehem. Calling the Magi to him, Herod care- 
fnlly inquired the time at which the remarkable "star" had made 
its appearance. Then he directed them to go forthwith to Beth- 
lehem and ascertain exactly all the facts in the case and report to 
him, pretending that he was equally desirous to pay due deference 
to the royal infant. 

The Magi resumed their journey, still beholding the luminous 
appearance in the heavens, until they reached Bethlehem, where, 
of course, in so small a village, they had no difficulty in ascer- 
taining the place where the infant Jesus actually was, as the star 
indicated somehow the very spot. They worshipped him, and 
opened their treasures ; and, according to oriental etiquette, pre- 
sented him costly gifts — gold and frankincense and myrrh. 



* There is not room in a work like 
this to enter into details for the reasons 
on which every statement is based and 
from which every conclusion is drawn. 
Dr. Francis W. Upham's book, "The 
Wise Men: Who they were and how 
they came to Jerusalem," New York, 
1871, is the first successful attempt 
that I have seen to clear up this pil- 
grimage. After reading it, I cancelled 
what I had before written on the 
subject. Besides solving what hereto- 
fore has been a mystery, this book gives 
new ideas and facts as to the history 



of our religion in the early ages of the 
world, which are of great value to the 
people as well as to scholars, and espe- 
cially so in their bearings on the dis- 
cussions of these times. I cordially 
concur with Dr. Tayler Lewis in saying : 
"Whoever reads this book must a< 
quire a new interest in the study of 
the Scriptures. There is hardly a page 
in which we are not startled by some- 
thing strikingly original, while at the 
same time leaving on the mind an im- 
pression of its profound truth." 



HIS FIRST YEARS. 



47 



Flight into Egypt. 



That night they dreamed. And in their dreams they were 
warned not to return to Herod. They were believers in visions. 
They hearkened to this. Instead of going back to Jerusalem 
they returned to their own country, by some other way, probably 
going south of the Dead Sea. 

The night after the departure of the Magi, Joseph dreamed a 
dream, in which he saw an angel, who said to him, " Arise, and 
take the young child and his mother, and flee 
into Egypt, and be there until I bring you word ; 
for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." Joseph 
obeyed the warning, and conveyed the mother and child to 
Egypt. This country was the 'most convenient refuge for them, 
being easy of access, politically disconnected from Judaea, and 
inhabited by many Jews, who had been long settled in the 
country.* 

Tradition makes Joseph's route by way of Hebron, Gaza, and 
the desert, and there could have been no more direct course. 
They still point out at Hebron a spot where the family encamped 
for the night. Not far from Heliopolis, on the way towards 
Cairo, is the village Metariyeh, where it is said Joseph made his 
6ojourn while in Egypt, which is probable, because of the many 



* Matthew cites this as a fulfilment 
of the saying in Hosea xi. 1, "And 
called my son out of Egypt. " But the 
saying in Hosea has, to a modern reader, 
no reference to the Messiah whatever, 
and is not prophetical, but is a mere 
statement of a fact in early Jewish his- 
tory. The explanation seems to be 
that it was the habit of the Hebrew 
mind to refer everything to the Messiah, 
to make every past event somehow typical 
of him, and that Matthew was familiar 
with the fact that before the coming 
Jesus the Jews believed, from this of 
passage, that the Messiah was to repeat 
in his history what had occurred in the 
history of his people. With this knowl- 
edge Matthew naturally cited this verse 
of Hosea. 

A similar accommodation occurs in 
Matt. ii. 18: "In Rama was there a 
voice heard, Rachel weeping for her 



children," etc., quoted from Jeremiah 
xxxi. 15, where it was applied to cir- 
cumstances connected with the Baby- 
lonish captivity. Dean Alf ord says : 
" We must seek an explanation in the 
acknowledged system of prophetic inter- 
pretation among the Jews, still extant 
in their rabbinical books, and now sanc- 
tioned to us by New Testament usage ; 
at the same time remembering, for our 
caution, how little even now we under- 
stand of the full bearing of prophetical 
words and acts. None of the expres- 
sions of this prophecy must be closely 
and literally pressed. The link of con- 
nection seems to be Rachel's sepulchre, 
which (Gen. xxxv. 19) was ' in the way 
to Bethlehem,' and perhaps from that 
circumstance the inhabitants of the 
place were called her children. " (Alf ord's 
Greek Test. , in loco.) 



48 



THE BIRTH AKD CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



Jews who resided at that time in Heliopolis. But there is no 
historic certainty in this. 

The nearness of Bethlehem to Jerusalem allowed B erod to 
inform himself promptly of the movements of the Magi. When 
he ascertained that they had eluded him he was 
Bethlehem babes, exceedingly angry, and sent and slew all the male 
children in Bethlehem " from two years old and 
under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired 
of the Wise Men." 

This great crime is consistent with the character of the man 
He had ascended the throne through blood ; in blood he had sus- 
tained himself; he had murdered his wife and three sons 
through the suspicion of jealousy ; and he had arranged that the 
principal men of the Jewish nation should be slaughtered at his 
death, that the people might have some occasion to mourn, as he 
foreknew what a joy of relief they would feel at the death of 
their tyrant. He was suffering the pain of a horrible and incur- 
able disease, loving life yet looking for speedy death. He was 
just in the condition to commit this outrage. 

That Josephus does not mention this circumstance is nothing 
to the purpose. Josephus did not know everything. Josephus 
did not tell all he knew. So many and great were the outrageous 
crimes committed by Herod that, even if this came to the knowl- 
edge of Josephus, it might not have occurred to him to mention it. 
It did not specially bear on anything he had in hand, and he had 
told enough of Herod's history to depict the character of the wretch 
of whom the Emperor Augustus is reported to have said, "Herodis 
mcdlim porcus esse quamfilius: " " I would rather be Herod's hog 
than Herod's son." There is every probability in the history, and 
nothing against it.* And Matthew is as good historical author- 
ity as any other ancient writer, and better than Josephus. f He 
has a reason for mentioning this circumstance, and he states what 



* Unless you say that it is too horri- 
ble to be believed : but why ? Herod 
murdered his wife Mariamne, and his 
three sons, Alexander, Aristobulus, and 
Antipater, the latter just before his own 
djath — perhaps about the time of the 
Bethlehem massacre. If he killed his 
own family, would he feel any com- 
punction at killing some of the children 



of the hated inhabitants of an obscure 
Jewish village ? 

f Lichtenstein suggests that Josephus 
would purposely avoid everything that 
drew attention to the Messianic hopes 
of his people : Lardner that he could 
not have mentioned this case without 
giving the Christian cause a great ad 
vantage. 



t 




HIS FIRST YEARS. 



49 



consists with the well-known character of the man of whom it is 
related. 

How many children fell we cannot now know. Voltaire, who 
was always ready to adopt any calculations which would tend to 
throw discredit on the history in the New Testament, supposes, 
according to an old Gentile tradition, that the number would be 
14,000 ! nearly three times as many as the largest assigned popula- 
tion of Bethlehem. Sepp supposed the number of inhabitants tc 
have been about 5,000, and this would make the number of chil- 
dren of the specified age to be about ninety. Townsend makes 
the number of inhabitants at 2,000 ; the number of slain children 
would then be about fifty. Some have said fifteen. No or>e 
knows. 

Upon the death of Herod Joseph had another dream, in which 
he saw an angel who told him to return to his native land with 
Mary and the child, as his enemies were now 
dead. Joseph obeyed immediately. He seems 
to have naturally supposed that David's city was 
the place where David's son should be reared, 
and so prepared to return to Bethlehem. But upon reaching the 
confines of Judsea, he learned that Archelaus had succeeded to 
the throne of his father Herod. He knew that this prince had 
inherited his father's cruelty and contempt of holy things, and so 
he was afraid to return to Bethlehem, which was within the ter- 
ritories of Archelaus. Joseph having again been warned in a 
dream to go to Galilee, which was under the dominion of the 
mild Antipas, seems to have made a detour, travelling east of the 
Jordan, within the territory of Herod Philip, until he came to be 
opposite Galilee, which he entered, and, proceeding to Nazareth, 
settled his family in that city. Jesus thus became confounded 
with the despised Nazarenes.* 

In this town the first twelve years of the life of Jesus were 
spent. History gives us little insight into this period of his exist- 
ence. Luke says that lie "grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled 



Return and set- 
tlement in Naza- 
reth. 



* Matthew says, " that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the 
prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. " 
So far as I can discover, the Old Testa- 
ment does not contain any text in which 
the word Nazarene is applied to the 
Messiah. The explanation may be that 



prophets had described the Messiah as a 
despised person, as the Nazarenes were. 
See John i. 46, where Nathanael quotes 
the proverb, " Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth ? " In Isaiah liii. we 
have a specimen of the general prophecy. 



*>0 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

with wisdom ; and the grace of God was upon him." He had 
for his playmates his younger half-brothers, children born to Mary 
after Jesus, together with his cousins, the children of Cleopas. 
At his mother's knee he learned language and the elements of 
religious thought. He was probably engaged in assisting in the 
ordinary affairs of the household as he grew older, and perhaps 
assisted his reputed father Joseph in his business as a carpenter. 
The silence of history is filled with the babblings of tradition, 
which seems to delight to crowd these twelve years with wonder- 
ful fantasies. We may rely only upon what is certainly affirmed, 
and yet it is reasonable to suppose that the wonderful child car- 
ried with him the unconscious air of an innocent soul that has 
uncommon depths of spiritual introspection, and is being fitted 
for a marvellous destiny. 

So great is the influence of the surroundings of the young that 
the situation and the scenery of Nazareth must hereafter forever 
be a study of profound interest to every student of the growth of 
character. There is none more glowing than the following, with 
which M. Kenan closes the second chapter of his "Life of 
Jesus" : 

" Nazareth was a little town, situated in a fold of land broadly open at 
the summit of the group of mountains which closes on the north the plain of 
Esdraelon. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can- 
not have varied much. It is quite cold in winter, and the climate is very 
healthy. The town, like all the Jewish villages of the time, was a mass of 
dwellings built without pretensions to style, and must have presented that 
poor and uninteresting appearance which is offered by villages in Semitic 
countries. The houses, from all that appears, did not differ much from those 
cubes of stone, without interior or exterior elegance, which now cover the 
richest portion of Lebanon, and which, in the midst of vines and fig-trees, 
are nevertheless very pleasant. The environs, moreover, are charming, and 
no place in the world was so well adapted to dreams of absolute happiness. 

"Even in our days Nazareth is a delightful sojourn, the only place perhaps 
in Palestine where the soul feels a little relieved of the burden which weighs 
upon it in the midst of this unequalled desolation. The people are friendly 
and good-natured; the gardens are fresh and green. Antonius Martyr, at 
the end of the sixth century, draws an enchanting picture of the fertility 
of the environs, which he compares to paradise. Some valleys on the western 
side fully justify his description. The fountain, about which the life and 
gayety of the little town centred, has been destroyed ; its broken channels 
now give but a turbid water. But the beauty of the women who gather there 
at night — this beauty which was already remarked in the sixth century, and 
in which was seen the gift of the Virgin Mary, has been surprisingly well 



HIS FIRST YEAES. 51 

preserved. It is the Syrian type, in all its languishing grace. There is no 
doubt that Mary was there nearly every day, and took her place, with her urn 
upon her shoulder, in the same line with her unremenibered countrywomen. 
Antonius Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, elsewhere disdainful to 
Christians, are here full of affability. Even at this day religious animosities 
are less intense at Nazareth than elsewhere. 

" The horizon of the town is limited ; but if we ascend a little to the pla- 
teau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which commands the highest houses, the 
prospect is splendid. To the west are unfolded the beautiful lines of Carmel, 
terminating in an abrupt point, which seems to plunge into the sea. Then 
stretch away the double summit which looks down upon Megiddo, the moun- 
tains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal 
age, the mountains of Gilboa, the picturesque little group with which are 
associated the graceful and terrible memories of Solam and Endor, and 
Thabor, with its finely rounded form, which antiquity compared to a breast. 
Through a depression between the mountains of Solam and Thabor are seen 
the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Parsea, which form a contin- 
uous line in the east. To the north, the mountains of Safed, sloping towards 
the sea, hide St. Jean d'Acre, but disclose the gulf of Khaifa. Such was the 
horizon of Jesus. 

" This enchanted circle, the cradle of the kingdom of God, represented the 
world to him for years. His life even went little beyond the limits familiar 
to his childhood. For beyond, to the north, you almost see upon the slope 
of Heraion, Cesarea Philippi, his most advanced point into the Gentile world, 
and to the south, you feel behind these already less cheerful mountains of 
Samaria, sad Judaea, withered as by a burning blast of abstraction and of 
death." 

Joseph and Mary were accustomed to go up annually to Jerusa- 
lem to attend the Passover Festival. "When Jesus reached the 
age of twelve he was carried to the Temple, to 
be initiated into the regular study of the law, and , e f us amon S 

t p i n . i to tne doctors. 

to begin the observance ox the festivals and fasts 
of the Jewish church. The Jews believed the age of twelve to 
be the line dividing childhood from youth. At that period one 
was called "son of the law," and first incurred legal responsi- 
bility.* 

This incident is the only passage in the early life of Jesus of 
which we have any reliable historical account. But it is full of 
interest. 

He was a remarkable child, born under remarkable circum- 
stances, which had undoubtedly been narrated to him, and which 

* Josephus states that when he was | city met with him to put questions tc 
fourteen years of age the priests of the | him about the law 



52 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JEStXS. 

lie had pondered as he read the law and the prophets, or heard 
them read. He had never been in the Temple since he was an 
infant. Now the sight of the solemn fane and the holy rites, 
amid the excitement of the great crowds who were present, must 
have stirred the depths of this profound young soul. A solemn 
sense of his spiritual capabilities, and perhaps an awful presenti- 
ment of his tremendous destiny must have come upon him. He 
began to be revealed to himself. He did not put himself forward 
as a teacher among those white-haired rabbis. His hour had not 
yet come. But he was neither a stupid nor a frivolous boy. His 
rare fine spirit had been developing itself amid the quiet scenes 
of nature, and he had been looking into the faces of the most 
profound and puzzling questions. Many a bright day from the 
heights near Nazareth he had gazed upon the grand scenery about 
him, turning over what he had heard of the historic associations 
of such famous places as were in sight, feeling his blood tingle 
with the touches of autumnal breezes or glowing in the rich 
warmth of the first spring ; and Life and Man, the Seen and the 
Unseen, Nature and Supernature, held their problems up to his 
soul. And he dared to study them. At twelve he was ready to 
ask questions even of rabbis. The custom of the Jewish schools 
was for the scholars to ask questions of the teachers, and much 
of rabbinical literature consists of answers to such interrogato- 
ries. The questions a man asks are as indicative of his character 
as the positive sayings that go out of his mouth. If history had 
preserved these questions which he asked in the Temple, we 
should be helped in our study of Jesus. It records simply the 
general fact that his learned hearers were astonished at his under- 
standing. 

When the Paschal ceremonies were ended, Joseph and Mary 

started to return to Nazareth. They did not at first perceive that 

Jesus was not of the company. They had been 

M ssed by Jo- gQ acclls t omec [ to his obedience as to rely upon his 

seph and Mary. ,, . . . 

promptness. Eastern travellers m ancient times 
ordinarily made a short journey on the first day. Perhaps Joseph 
and Mary did not start until some time in the afternoon, and 
then in company with many others. When they pitched their 
tents that night they discovered his absence. They returned to 
Jerusalem. Luke says that "after three days they found him." 
This probably includes their first day out, the second day, in which 



HIS FIRST YEAES. 



53 



they returned and inquired, and the third day, when they found 
him. He was in the Temple, among the rabbis, astounding them 
by asking questions, startling by reason of their artless depth and 
amazing significance.* 

Mary — not Joseph — spoke to him. She and Joseph knew their 
relations to the boy. And Mary said, " Son, why have you dealt 
so with us? Behold, your father and I have sought you sorrow- 
ing." Up to that time he seems to have regarded Joseph as his 
father, and to have behaved towards him in that relation. But in 
his public teachings he never acknowledged Joseph as his father. 
If Mary had said "we," the remarkable answer in which Jesus ex- 
presses his sense of his own intimate relationship with God could 
not have been given. But "your father aud I" brings it. With 
tender reproachf ulness Jesus replied : " How is it that you sought 
me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's busi- 
ness?" As if he would remind his mother that she ought to 
know from his extraordinary introduction to the world that his 
was to be an extraordinary life. As if he would remind her of 
the fact that at the Annunciation she had been told by the angel 
that her child was to be the " Son of the Most High." All this 
she knew; but now it comes home to her with power, when that 
simple, ingenuous, noble child stands up in the house of God and 
claims his Divine Paternity. 

Of this only authenticated saying of Jesus in his childhood, Stier 
beautifully says: " Solitary floweret out of the wonderful inclosed 
garden of thirty years, plucked precisely there where the swollen 
bud, at a distinctive crisis, bursts into flower. To mark that is 
assuredly the design and the meaning of this record. The child 
Jesus sought to know himself, and his whole life of childhood 
was this seeking." 

All these things Mary laid up in her heart, and most probably 
after the death of Jesus told them to Luke. This sounds like a 
mother's narrative repeated by a historian. 

That Jesus had accumulated a vast number of questions touch- 
ing God and man, life and death, the seen and the invisible, it is 
most natural to suppose. One also naturally thinks that those 
questions must have been based largely upon the Hebrew sacred 



* u To answer children is indeed an 
sxamen rigororum, " says Hamann. And 
again, ' ' He who will stop the mouths of 



scribes and sophists must know how to 
put questions." (Edition of Roth, ii, 
424.) 



54 THE BERTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

books, and that when he should find an opportunity of going to 
ecclesiastical headquarters and visiting the appointed expounders 
of the law and the official explainers of the prophets, he would 
propound such questions, and that his interrogatories would not 
be captious or critical or superficial, about tithes and such trifles, 
but such as the solemn tone and the special deep phrases of the 
Hebrew oracles would suggest to a child of such exquisite genius 
and such extraordinary spirituality. Would they not naturally 
run along the lofty line of Messianic hope and promise which his 
gifted ancestor David had drawn ? Would they not push against 
the doors to spiritual freedom and the emancipation of humanity 
which Isaiah seems to have set ajar? 

When this marvellous child came amid the rabbis and began 
to ask these questions, no wonder they were amazed. But he 
must have been disappointed. Blindness was on the eyes of the 
teachers in Jerusalem. The more he pressed his simple questions 
the more he must have felt that sense of his own sonship, of that 
intimate nearness to the Father of spirits which has singled him 
from among the company of the sons of God as the elder brother 
of humanity. They could not instruct him as to Jehovah's An- 
nointed. Years after, on his last visit to Jerusalem, in the 
last week of his public ministry, in this same Temple, Jesus pro- 
pounded to this same school of teaching the questions, "What 
think ye of Christ? Whose son is he ? " (Matt. xxii. 42.) Did 
not his first questions have the same bearing? 

Two things seem to have come strongly to him from this visit; 
his own Peculiarity and the Worthlessness of the religious teach- 
ing of his nation. To what extent the former we do not know. 
If it was a wide view and a profound conviction, he kept it hum- 
bly folded in his soul and bided his time. 

Then he went down with Mary and Joseph to Nazareth, and 
abode with them, and was subject to them. For another space, 
covering eighteen years, we have an unbroken 
in Nazareth silence as to Jesus. History does not utter a sylla- 

ble. But during all that season he was ripening ; 
and the times were ripening. He lived a life of some activity, 
probably working with his reputed father at the bench of the car- 
penter. He led also probably a social life, making and receiving 
visits, as his presence at the marriage in Cana would seem to im- 
ply that he was in friendly, cheerful intercourse with the people 



HIS FIRST YEARS. 55 

of his neighborhood. Beyond this we cannot penetrate. "We 
only know that when a man achieves in a few years a great work , 
the influence of which lasts, he must somehow through his pre - 
vious life have been accumulating assets of power to meet the 
drafts of his crisis. Jesus was no exception. He was thirty 
years growing in the preparation to do the work of three. 

That preparation could hardly have embraced what we call 
" learning," in any sense beyond a study of the ancient Hebrew 
Scripture. Hellenism, which embraces what we generally con- 
ceive to be the culture of the Greeks, had not penetrated to the 
obscure town in which Jesus spent his early life. Indeed it was 
discouraged by the Jews throughout Judea. In the Talmud of 
Jerusalem (Peah. i. 1) a story is told of a learned rabbi, who, 
when asked at what time it was proper to teach a child the wis- 
dom of the Greeks, replied : " At the hour when it is neither day 
nor night, for it is written of the law, ' Thou shalt study it day 
and night.' " He must also have been preserved from what M. 
Renan happily calls the " grotesque scholasticism " at that time 
taught in Jerusalem, and which shortly after was embodied in 
the Talmud. He had no regular theological training. 



CHAPTER V. 

PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS. 

JUDAEA. 

"When Jesus was born Herod was near his end, perishing of an 
incurable disease. His reign had been one of oppression and 
H , terror to the Jews, but so skilful a politician was 

he that no combination had been able to break 
his influence at Rome. He continued his crimes up to the very 
day of his death. He had slain his wife on suspicion, that 
Mariamne whom he so loved that after her death he would go 
howling for her through his palace. He had slain his two sons, 
Alexander and Aristobulus, and just before he died he slew a 
third son, Antipater. 

He had outraged the religious sentiments of the Jews. He 
had built a theatre in the Holy City. He had introduced Roman 
games, in which gladiators and wild beasts fought. He had put 
up the Golden Eagle over the gate of the temple, probably about 
the time he had inscribed the name of Agrippa over the gate. 
The Jews regarded this as a breach of the Second Command- 
ment. It was intolerable to them. It was " an abomination of 
desolation." At the instigation of two rabbis there was an up- 
rising, and on a false report of the death of Herod the young 
men of the city tore down the hated thing in open daylight. 
Herod caused the rabbis to be burnt alive, the high-priest Mat- 
thias to be deposed, and Joazar to take his place. 

This, in brief, was the state of affairs in Jerusalem when He- 
rod died, as related at large by Josephus (Ant., book xvii.) 

To understand the history of the times of Jesus we must 
know the condition of the Jews and the course of their rulers, of 
F ii f H d wnom members of the family of Herod were 
chief in the first year of Jesus. We need only 
notice the children of the first five wives of Herod, in a table 
adapted from Smith's JST. T. History. 



PUBLIC AFFAIKS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 57 

1. Before his accession to the throne Herod married Doris ; 
and her only son, Antdpater, was the victim of his father's dying 
rage. 2. Aristobulus, his eldest (son by Jfariamne, the grand- 
daughter of Hyrcanus), was the parent of a large family, and 
from him were descended the two Agrlppas, the first of whom 
was the " King Herod " who slew James and imprisoned Peter ; 
the second the " King Agrd?pa " before whom Paul pleaded. 
3. After the murder of Mariamne Herod married another 
Mariamne, daughter of the high-priest Simon : her son was He- 
rod Phild?, whose marriage with his niece Herodias, daughter of 
Aristobulus, followed by her divorce of him to marry his half- 
brother, Herod Antipas, to whom she stood in the same relation, 
led to the martyrdom of John the Baptist. He is often con- 
founded with his half-brother Philip, the Tetrarch of Itursea. 
4:. His next wife, Ifalthace, a Samaritan, was the mother of 
Herod Antipas and Archelaus. 5. By Cleopatra he had two 
Bons, the younger of whom was Philip, the Tetrarch of Itursea 
and the adjacent districts, with Trachonitis. 6. His other wives 
and their children are of no consequence in the history. These 
complicated relations will be made clearer by the following con- 
spectus of the chief personages with whom the history is con- 
cerned for the four generations of the family : 

A. — Herod the Great. 

Wives. Sons. 

1. Doris 1. Antipater. ) -^ , , , ., . » 

2. Mariamne, grandd. of Hyrca- ( 2. Aristobulus. (Executed by their fa- 

nus II \ 3. Alexander. f ther m ^ Metlme - 

3. Mariamne, d. of Simon \ 4 ' Herod TT Pb j lip L [ Lived as a P rivate P er ' 

' ( m. Herodias. ) son. 

4. Malthace, a Samaritan \ 5 ' ? er , od M P»> ■ • ■ ^ rar( * of , ? aUlee - 

/ o. Archelaus Mhnarch ot Judaea. 

5. Cleopatra \ m. Salome^f Philip I Te * rarcl1 of Northern 

( I. and of Herodias. ) rer£ea > etc - 

B. — Children op Aristobulus. 

1. Herod Agrippa I King of Judaea. 

2. Herodias. m. — 

(1.) Herod Philip I. 
(2.) Herod Antipas. 

C— Children of Herod Agrippa I. 

1. Herod Agrippa II. (titular king) Tetrarch of N. Persea. eta 

2. Bernice Named in Acts xxv. 23. 

8. Drusilla, m. to Felix Named in Acts xxiv. 24. 



58 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OP JESUS. 

Herod made a will in favor of the children of Malthace, name- 
ly, Herod Antipas and Archelaus. At first Antipas was named 

as the successor: but the final codicil gave the 
Herod's will. , A \ , m a .• i /v i 

succession to Archelaus. lo Antipas was left the 

government of Galilee and Persea, with the title of tetrarch. In 

his domain Jesus spent the larger portion of his life. To Herod 

Philip II. was left the territory and government of Itursea, Gau- 

lonitis, and Batnsea, with the title of tetrarch. 

As soon as Herod's death was known the soldiery were gath- 
ered together in the amphitheatre. A letter from Herod was 
read, in which he thanked the army for their fidelity to him, and 
exhorted them to be as faithful to Archelaus. Then the kind's 
last testament was read, in which he named his successor. Ar- 
chelaus was acclaimed king. 

He addressed himself at once to the discharge of his last filial 

duties. He took care that the funeral of his father should be 

most sumptuous. A golden bier, embroidered 

, " with precious stones, held the body, which was 

covered with purple. The dead monarch had a 
diadem upon his head, over which was a crown of gold ; he also 
had a sceptre in his right hand. The bier was surrounded by the 
sons and numerous relatives of the deceased. Next to these the 
guard and band, dressed according to their nationalities — Thra- 
cians, Germans, Galatians — then the whole army followed " in the 
same manner as they used to go out to war, and as they used to 
be put in array by their muster-masters and centurions ; these 
were followed by five hundred of his domestics carrying spices. 
And so," says Josephus (Ant., book xvi. chap. 8), " they went eight 
furlongs to Herodium, for there by his own command he was to be 
buried." From Jericho, where Herod died, to Herodium, where he 
was buried, was a distance of two hundred furlongs, and if the 
account of Josephus means that the procession moved at the rate of 
eight furlongs a day, this pomp continued no less than twenty days. 

While Archelaus was thus publicly mourning for his father, he 
was said to be privately spending his nights in revelry. The 
mourning done, he went up to the Temple, took 
Archelaus. Trou- -j^g sea t -upon a throne of gold, spoke conciliating- 
bles in settling the , , r . . . . I ,, ,i • 

succession v to tne multitude, promised them everytlungj 

but declined to assume the crown until the will 
of his father had been ratified by Csesar. 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING- THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



59 



But, almost immediately after, a sedition was raised in the city. 
The people began a lamentation for the two martyrs who had 
perished in the affair of the Eagle. At the Passover, at the time of 
the evening sacrifice, this feeling became deep, and broke into cries 
for vengeance. Archelaus sent his general to explain and remon- 
strate. But it was of no avail. The upshot of the riot was the 
slaughter of three thousand men and the breaking up of the feast. 

Archelaus then went to Borne to secure the establishment of 
his kingdom by an imperial edict. He carried with him the 
eloquent orator Nicholas of Damascus, who had 
been a faithful friend of his father. With him ^ 
also was his intriguing aunt, Salome, who was 
secretly in the interest of his brother, Herod Antipas. The Jews 
sent after him a deputation of five hundred of their chief men, 
praying Caesar to abolish the monarchy and let them be governed 
by their own laws. They made what capital they could of the 
inauspicious events which had attended the beginning of his 
government.* 

While Archelaus was in Borne, Jerusalem was in charge of 
Sabinus, the Boman procurator of the province. He was a vio- 
lent, tyrannical, avaricious coward. He made 
diligent search for the late king's treasure, and 
did not scruple to take even the sacred treasure. He seemed to 
devise means to exasperate the Jews. The smouldering fires of 
fanatic determination to free their country from the Boman yoke 
were fanned into a flame. When Pentecost came vast multitudes 
of men from all parts of the country flocked to Jerusalem, mani- 
festly full of bitterness and ready for mischief. They encamped 
about the Temple, and besieged Sabinus, who from a lofty tower, 
to which he had betaken himself for safety, gave a signal to his 
troops to issue forth against the besiegers. Much slaughter was 
on both sides. The Jews were repulsed, but betook themselves 
to the Temple, from the heights of which they rained arrows on 
the Bomans, who could not reach their enemies. The Bomans, 



* Perhaps it is to this that Jesus allud- 
ed in the parable reported by Luke (xix. 
12-27) : "A certain nobleman ( t yev»??, a 
man of birth or rank, tlie son of Herod) 
went into a far country {Italy) to re- 
ceive for himself a kingdom (Jucksea), 



and to return. But his citizens (tha 
Jews) hated him, and sent a message (or 
embassy) after him (to Augustus Ccesaj'), 
saying, ' We will not have this man to 
reign over us.' " 



60 



THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



Varus. 



however, set fire to the cloisters, the roof fell in, and many were 
precipitated into the flames. Those who were not, were either 
slain by the Romans or threw themselves upon their swords or into 
the fire. The troops of Sabinus broke into the Temple and plun- 
dered the sacred treasures ; but the Jews, furious at these outrages, 
continued the siege. 

Meanwhile disbanded troops of Herod roamed over the coun- 
try plundering and ravaging. The people were driven about, 

and many of the villages were destroyed. The 

utmost confusion prevailed in Jerusalem and in the 
rural districts. Yarus, the prefect of Syria, marched to the relief of 
Sabinus with a great force. The insurgents laid down their arms ; 
two thousand were crucified, and the others sent to Rome for trial. 
Notwithstanding the influence brought to bear against him, 
Archelaus succeeded in securing from Augustus so much of a 

confirmation of his father Herod's will as to make 
re e aus con- ^.^ nQt k[ n g indeed over the whole country, but 

ethnarch of Judsea, Idumsea, and Samaria, one- 
half of that which had been subject to Herod. Archelaus was 
also promised the royal dignity if he should govern so as to 
deserve it. He retained also the chief cities of Jerusalem, Se- 
baste, Csesarea, and Joppa. His income was six hundred talents.* 
Upon his return he seemed disposed in some measure to conciliate 
the Jews. The only act of his, however, which had much con- 
cern with their history, was his displacement of Joazar, whom 
Herod had made high-priest after the affair of the Eagle, and 
the substitution of Eleazar, Joazar's brother. But his general 
course was tyrannous towards Jews and Samaritans, and the 
hatred of the Jews for him was increased by his violation of their 
law. Glaphyra was his sister-in-law, having been the wife of his 
brother Alexander. After his father Herod had killed him, Gla- 
phyra married Juba, king of Lydia, and when he died Archelaus 
divorced his wife Mariamne and married Glaphyra. She had had 
three children by his brother Alexander, which made it offensive 
to the Jewish law for Archelaus to marry her. The Jewish people 
made sufficient interest in Rome to cause Archelaus to be recalled 



* A shekel, in the times of Josephus, 
from whom we have the statements in the 
text, was worth about 70 cents in gold, 
and 3,000 shekels being to a talent, the 



talent was worth about $2,100; and 
the income of Archelaus must havf 
been about $1,860,000 in gold. 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 61 

and examined. The result was that Augustus stripped him of his 
rule, at the end of ten years after his appointment, took away his 
money, and banished him to Vienne, in Gaul, where he died, the 
year unknown. 

In the meantime the excited state of the public mind rendered 
it possible for many pretenders and impostors to palm themselves 
upon the people and add to the general troubles and perplexities. 
One case was notable. 

There was in the city of Sidon a young man, by birth a Jew, 
who had been educated by a Roman freedman. His resemblance 
to Alexander, one of the sons of Herod whom he 
had slain, was so striking that many were ready f pseu 

~ ^ J exanuer. 

to attest that he was Alexander. Discovering 
this he turned it to his own account, and united with " an ill man " 
who had great cunning. The story put forth was, that he was the 
real Alexander, brother of Aristobulus, and that those whom 
Herod sent to destroy him had actually saved him and his brother, 
slaying other men in their stead. In Crete and in Melos the 
Jews believed him the true Alexander, and gave him much 
money. He had the audacity to go to Rome. The Jews of that 
city, learning that he was coming, went out to meet him, brought 
him in a royal litter through the streets, and adorned him with 
ornaments at their own expense. There was great joy at what 
they supposed a special providence. So great a stir did this make 
that the report reached Augustus, who sent for this pseudo- 
Alexander and his accomplice. The emperor soon detected the 
imposture. The Prince Alexander had lived in his palace, and 
Augustus knew his physique. This man's hands and body had 
all the roughness which belongs to a laboring man, while Alex- 
ander's had had the smoothness of those who are reared delicately 
in kings' palaces. So Augustus took the young man aside and 
told him of the discovery, and that he thought the plan too deep 
to have been concocted by one so young, and that if he would 
reveal his accomplices his life should be spared. He did. He 
was put to the galleys and his accomplice was put to death. * 
And so, again, had the hopes of the Jews been raised and dashed. 
Upon the banishment of Archelaus, Judaea, including Samaria, 
was reduced to the state of a Roman province and governed by a 

* Josephus, Ant., book xvii ch. 12. 



62 THE BIETH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

procurator, who was the subordinate of the Prefect of Syria. The 
Roman dependencies were of two classes, — those which were gov- 
erned solely by the Emperor, and those which were under the 
direction of the Senate. The former were the imperial, the latter 
the senatorian provinces ; the former were under the immediate 
government of Legates, the latter of Proconsuls. The Legates col- 
lected the revenues through procurators, procuratores Ccesaris • the 
proconsuls through quaestors. All these officers were men of rank. 
Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, called in the New Testament 
Cyrenius, had been consul a.it.c. 742, b.c. 12. Upon the banish- 
ment of Archelaus he was made Prefect of 
'Syria to finish the enrolment — the beginning of 
the making of which had called Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem — 
or to collect the tax consequent upon such enrolment. The pro- 
curator under Quirinus was Coponius, whose residence was at 
Caesarea, on the coast. Quirinus himself came over to Judaea to 
look after the late king's treasures. The enforcement of the tax 
caused great disturbance. To the Jews it was always most detesta- 
ble on religious grounds. Jerusalem was kept comparatively quiet 
by the wise influence of Joazar, who was for a short time again 
high-priest. The rural districts, however, were full of turbulence. 
There was one Judas who came out of Galilee and headed a 
revolt " in the days of the taxing." * According to Josephus 
{Ant., xviii. 1, § 1) he was a Gaulonite of the city 
T , of Gamala, and was called a Galilean probably 

because his revolt first broke out in that province. 
The watchword of his party, " We have no Lord and master but 
God," is a key to the character of this uprising. It was theo- 
cratic. God was king ; Caesar was not. To give tribute to Caesar 
was treason to God. Under God was freedom, under Caesar 
slavery. He taught all the scrupulous external and ceremonial 
morality of the Pharisees, while he inspired his followers with an 
intense love of freedom and a fanatical disregard of life, so that 
rather than call any man " master " they should prefer to surren- 
der themselves and their friends to the death. He was a man of 
fiery eloquence, and attracted large numbers to his standard. 
They became lawless, and committed many depredations before 
the Roman power suppressed them. 

* He is referred to by Gamaliel in his speech before the Sanhedrim, Acts v. 37. 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 63 

Judas was killed, and his immediate followers, who were called 
Gaulonites, were dispersed. But the spirit of this insurrection 
survived many years, and animated the Zealots and 
Sicarii of later days, to whose obstinate fanaticism 
Josephus attributes the subsequent troubles of his country and 
the destruction of Jerusalem, as in a.d. 47 two sons of Judas 
renewed the revolt, and for twenty years their younger brother, 
Menahem, took the lead of a band of desperadoes, laid siege to 
Jerusalem, captured the city, assumed the name and state of king, 
and committed many outrages, when he was slain by the partisans 
of Eleazar the high-priest, a.d. 66* 

It was in the procuratorship of Coponius that Jesus was in the 
Temple, about a year after Annas had been made coponius 
high-priest. 

Under his government it was that the Samaritans polluted the 
Temple, after the maimer adopted by Josiah toward the idolatrous 
shrines, by secretly bringing dead men's bones and strewing them 
in the cloisters during the night of the Passover, when the priests 
had opened the temple gates, as their wont was, immediately 
after midnight. Thenceforward the Samaritans were excluded 
from the Temple. It was another matter of distress and public 
perplexity and increase of hate between Jews and Samaritans. 

About a.d. 10, Coponius was succeeded in the procuratorship 
by M. AMBrvius, and he was succeeded by Annius Pufus. Upon 
the death of Augustus (a.d. 14), his successor, Tiberius, ap- 
pointed a new procurator, Yalerius Gratus, w T ho held office till 
he was succeeded by Pontius Pilatus. There 
had been a succession of high-priests, whose his- 
tory is not now important. Pilatus, or Pilate, as we know him, 
found Joseph Caiaphas in the high-priest's office. 

The jprcenomen of Pilate is lost. Of his early history we have 
no authentic information. There is a German legend which rep- 
resents him as the bastard son of Tyrus, king of Mayence. The 
story further goes that having been guilty of a murder in Pome, 
whither his father had sent him as a hostage, he was sent into 
Pontus, where, having subdued certain barbarous tribes, he rose 
to honor, received the name of Pontius, and was sent as procura- 
tor to Judsea. But his name may indicate that he was of the gens 

* Milman's Hist. Jews, ii 152, 231. 



64 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

of tlie Pontii, whose first distinguished member was the famoas 
Samnite general C. Pontius Telesimes. 

Pilate was the sixth Roman procurator of Judsea. The usual 
official residence was at Caesarea ; but during the festivals it was 
the custom of the procurator to be present in Jerusalem, for the 
better oversight of the turbulent population who ordinarily then 
assembled, and were on such occasions most easily excited to vio- 
lence. Shortly after his appointment, Pilate removed the army 
to Jerusalem for winter-quarters, "in order," says Josephus, "to 
abolish the Jewish laws." In the night-time, 

Pilate outrages w i t i 10ut fl^ knowledge of the people, the Roman 
the Jews. to . L L ' . 

standards were brought m and set up m the city. 

These standards bore the image of Caesar; and because the re- 
ligious regulations of the Jews were so stringent against images, 
former procurators had respected religious scruples, which Pilate 
disregarded and defied. The infuriated people rushed to Csesarea 
in multitudes and interceded with Pilate to remove the offence. 
This was continued for five days with increasing vehemence. 
Pilate refused, on the ground that the removal would be an af- 
front to Caesar. 

The people still persevered in their pleadings. On the sixth 
day they renewed their obtestations before Pilate, who was seated 
on a throne in an open space, and had troops so arranged that at 
a given signal they surrounded the suppliants. Pilate then threat- 
ened them with immediate death unless they ceased disturbing 
him and went to their homes. Upon this they threw themselves 
upon the ground, made bare their necks, and declared that they 
would sooner die than see their laws so violated. Their numbers 
and the firmness of their resolution prevailed. Pilate ordered 
the standards to be brought back from Jerusalem to Caesarea. 

Not warned by this, Pilate attempted another outrage on the 
feelings of the Jews. In his palace at Jerusalem he hung up 
certain gilt shields without images, but bearing the names of 
heathen deities.* The people had not forgotten the clandestine 
introduction of the standards, and this new act greatly inflamed 
them. They appealed to the Emperor Tiberius, who ordered their 
removal. This must have weakened Pilate's influence at Rome. 

The Corban f among the Jews was any oblation, but especially 

♦Philo, Ad Caium, § 38, ii. 589. J \ Jahn, Bib. Arch., v. §§ 392 394. 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 65 

in the fulfilment of a vow, which was dedicated to the Temple. 
It might be money, cattle, lands and houses, and 

. , ■■ t > ,i m i i ^ j. The Corban. 

it became the property or the lemple, only that 

the land might be redeemed in the year of Jubilee. (Lev. xxvii. 

1-24.) It was, of course, held as very sacred. But this treasure 

was diverted by Pilate to the building of an aqueduct to bring 

water into Jerusalem. This so incensed the Jews that, in the 

language of Josephus, "many ten thousands of the people got 

together and made a clamor against him. Pilate dressed a num- 

ber of his soldiers like the Jews, and had daggers concealed on 

their persons. When the Jews would not forbear, he gave the 

soldiers the signal agreed on beforehand, and they fell upon the 

unarmed and surprised populace, striking the innocent as well as 

the guilty, so that many were slain and others wounded." * 

This was the kind of man under whose procuratorship Jesus 
spent his whole public life and exercised his public ministry, 
under whom he suffered and died, as the Evangelists and other 
historians relate. 

Tacitus says: "Christus, Tiberio Imperate, per procuratorum 
Pontium Pilatum supplicio adf ectus erat." f 

The following is the only mention of Jesus which occurs in the 
writings of Josephus : J 

" Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call 
him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as 
receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews 
and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ. And when Pilate, at the 
suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, 
those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them 
alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten 
thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Chris- 
tians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." 

GALILEE. 

We turn now from Judaea to Galilee. By the first will of Herod, 
Antipas was to be his successor; but a change of the will gave 
precedence to Archelaus : and Augustus Caesar 
confirmed Herod Antipas as Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, 
according to the altered will of his father; and tr ^ rch 
hence he is mentioned by Matthew and Luke as 

* Josephus, Ant., book xviii. ch. iii I \ Josephus, Ant., bookxviii. ch. iii. § 3. 
f Ann. xv. 44. 

5 



66 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 01 JESUS. 

Herod the Tetearch. The name of " king," given him by Mark, 
(vi. 14) must be regarded as a title of courtesy. His first wife 
was the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia Petrsea. While liv- 
ing with her he fell in love with Herodias, the daughter of Aris- 
tobulus, who was his own half-brother. She was then the wife 
of Herod Philip I. (another half-brother of Herod Antipas), and 
by him had had one daughter, Salome. He was living in retire- 
ment in Pome. Herodias disliked this obscurity and forsook him 
and accepted the offer of Herod Antipas to live with him. This 
outraged Aretas, the father of his first wife, whom he had divorced 
to please Herodias. Aretas made war upon him and destroyed his 
army, and was restrained only by a movement of the Emperor 
Tiberius, who ordered Yitellius to march against Aretas, which 
command failed of fulfilment because of the death of Tiberius. 
But the Jews regarded this disaster to Herod Antipas as the ven- 
geance of heaven for the murder of John the Baptist, who had 
rebuked Herod Antipas and Herodias for the sinful lives they 
were leading. 

This Herod had quarrelled with Pilate the procurator in Judaea, 
it is supposed because of those " Galileans whose blood Pilate had 
mingled with their sacrifices," a circumstance 
Pil t arre S W1 mentioned in Luke (xiii. 1, xxiiL 12). There 
seems to be no mention made elsewhere of this ; 
but the Galileans were foremost in the frays which occurred at 
the festivals, and these difficulties were so frequent that it is not 
to be wondered that one of them escaped the notice of Josephus. 
Herod would naturally resent Pilate's punishing his subjects, 
whatever might have been their guilt ; not to mention the fact 
that he assumed the role of patron of the Jews. The court he 
paid the Jews is shown by his attendance upon the Passover in 
Jerusalem. That visit gave Pilate an opportunity to propitiate 
him by acknowledging his jurisdiction over Galileans ; so that 
when he learned that Jesus was a Galilean he sent him to 
Herod Antipas. 

By Herodias he was instigated to a movement which ended in 

his ruin. His" nephew, Herod Agrippa I. (under whom, years 

after, came all the territory which had been 

ruled over by his grandfather, Herod the Great), 

was a favorite with Caligula, having been imprisoned for expressing 

a wish for Caligula's early succession to the imperial throne. 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 67 

Upon him Caligula showered favors. What specially moved 
Herod Antipas and Herodias was that Herod Agrippa had at- 
tained to a royal estate. So they determined to go to Home, osten- 
sibly to petition for the royal title, but really to intrigue against 
Agrippa, who, on his side, brought accusation against his uncle 
Antipas, whom the Emperor Caligula banished to Gaul, where he 
died. Herodias showed at least this good trait, that she shared 
his exile. Josephus puts a very pretty speech into her mouth, 
making her say to Caius : 

" Thou indeed, O Emperor ! actest after a magnificent manner, and as 
becomes thyself in what thou off erest me ; but the kindness which I have for 
my husband hinders me from partaking of the favor of thy gift ; for it is 
not just that I, who have been made a partner in his prosperity, should for- 
sake him in his misfortunes." (Josephus, Ant., book xviii. chap, viii.) 

The character of this prince can be easily gathered from the 
record. He was not so great a tyrant as his father Herod. But 
he was unscrupulous. He shut up John in prison 
for no crime nor violation of the peace, but TT t^f 1 ° 

tip Herod Antipas. 

because that faithful teacher reproved him for 
his adultery with Herodias, and for his general wickedness of 
life. He was cunning. Jesus, generally so mild and careful in 
his speech, calls him a " fox." (Luke xiii. 32.) He was weak 
and superstitious. For a time he heard John gladly (Mark vi. 
20), and wished to see Jesus, that he might witness some miracle. 
(Luke xxiii. 8.) Because of a foolish oath, uttered in wine, he 
slew John, and was afterward filled with remorse ; and although 
a Sadducee, not believing in spirits and the resurrection, he was 
frightened when he heard of Jesus, fearing it might be John come 
back from the dead. (Mark vi. 14.) He was willing to have 
Jesus destroyed, but contrived to roll the responsibility upon Pilate. 
He was unscrupulous, capricious, sensual, superstitious, and weak. 

THE CHURCH. 

The office of the High-Priest had felt the general unsettling 
effect of these turbulent times, so that there seems 

r • , o \ , n ,-, . The Hign-Priest- 

to be some confusion at the date of the opening hood c a i apca3 
of the public ministry of Jesus. Luke says a nd Annas, 
(iii. 2) that Annas and Caiaphas were high-priests. 
An investigation of all available records gives us the follow- 
ing result: The real and acting High-Priest was Joseph, 



68 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

surnamed Caiaphas ; and his Yicar, or Deputy, was his father-in 
law, called Annas by Lnke, Ananus by Josephus, but probably 
called in his own time and place Hananiah. Caiaphas was ap- 
pointed to the office by the procurator, Valerius Gratus, about 
a.d. 25, and held it through all the procuratorship of Pontius Pi- 
late, and was consequently High-Priest through the whole public 
ministry of John and of Jesus. He married the daughter of a 
former High-Priest, Annas, who still possessed great influence, 
several of his family having held the highest sacerdotal position. 

The mention of these two jointly by Luke has made some per- 
plexity, which has given rise to various explanations, of which it 
is necessary to state only that which seems satisfactory, namely, 
that of Wieseler, who, in his Chronology, and more recently in 
an article in Herzog's Heal-cyclopddie, maintains that the two, 
Annas and Caiaphas, were jointly at the head of the Jewish 
people, the latter being the actual High-Priest, and Annas being 
president of the Sanhedrim. In this latter position he might have 
acted as vicar to his son-in-law, in an office called in the Hebrew 
■po, Sagan, and mentioned by the Talmudists. This is the 
opinion of Kuinol. It is suggested that such position would not 
be unworthy of one who had held the office of High-Priest, since 
the dignity of the Sagan was very great. Lightf oot shows, for in- 
stance, that he might on urgent occasions enter the Holiest of Holies. 
{Hot. TIeb. Luc, iii. 2.) It is not strange that having been actually 
a High-Priest, and being now president of the Sanhedrim, ho 
should still be called by the name of the lofty office he had filled. 

We shall meet Caiaphas as the history shall progress. It may 
merely be mentioned here that he was a Saddncee, and used his 
influence oppressively, the Sadducees usually being more intolerant 
than the Pharisees : and frequently it has been remarked that no 
people are more illiberal than those who claim, par excellence, the 
name of Liberals, and that no sectaries have been more intoler- 
ant than those who have had no creed. 

The word Sanhedrim — or more accurately Sanhedrin, coming 
from the Greek avvsdgiov, no Hebrew etymology 

The Sanhedrim. . . , ~ i _c ♦. -i • ^ -i a 

having been found for it — designates the bupreme 
Council of the Jewish people as it existed in the times of 
Jesus and long before. In the Talmud it is called " The Great 
Sanhedrim ;" in the Mishna, " The House of Judgment? 

The Mishna traces the origin of this assembly to the times of 



PUBLIC AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 



69 



Its origin. 



Moses, who was directed (Num. xi. 16, 17) to associate with him 
seventy elders in the government. But Vorstius 
(De SynJiedriis, § 25-40) seems to show that the 
identity of this Council of Moses and the Sanhedrim of later days 
was a mere conjecture of the rabbins, as we find no trace of the 
continuance of the Council of Moses in Deut. xvii. 8, 10, where 
it surely w r ould have been mentioned if then existing, nor in the 
age of Joshua and the judges, nor in the times of the kings ; so 
that that council seems to have been temporary. The Greek 
etymology of the word points to a time subsequent to Alexan- 
der's supremacy in Judaea.* It has been conjectured that the 
yegovoux twv 'lovdaiMv of 2 Mace. i. 10 ; iv. 44; xi. 27, designates the 
Sanhedrim. If so, it is the earliest historical trace of the institu- 
tion. Many learned men agree in believing that it arose after the 
return of the Jews from Babylon, and in the time of the Seleu- 
cidse or of the Hasmonean princes. The fact stated by Jose- 
phus,t that Herod, when procurator of Galilee, b.c 47, was called 
before the Sanhedrim on the charge that he had usurped the func- 
tions of that body in putting men to death, shows how great its 
power was at that day, and the probability that it w T as not then of 
recent origin. 

For the constitution of the Sanhedrim we are compelled to 
rely upon the incidental notices in the New Testament, namely, 

Matt. xxvi. 57, 59 : Mark xv. 1 ; Luke xxii. 6Q ; T . ... ,. 

' ' ' ' Its constitution. 

and Acts v. 21. From these it probably appears 
that the body consisted of the High-Priests (and those who had 
been High-Priests) and 'aQxisgslg, chief-priests, that is to say, 
the heads of the twenty-four classes into which the priests w^ere 
divided ; notvSvisQoi, elders, men of age and experience ; and 
YQot^iaiuQ^ scribes, men learned in the law. 

The number was probably eeventy-one. There was nearly perfect 
unanimity of opinion among the Jews, and that was expressed in 
the Mishna, which says {Sanedr. i. 61) that there were seventy- 
one judges. The reason assigned for this number is not sound, 
namely, that in ISTum. xi. 6, Moses is required to 
gather seventy elders, who with himself would 
make seventy-one, as we have shown it probable that no connec- 



Its size. 



* Livy expressly states (xiv. 32) : 
" Pronunciatum quod at statum Mace- 
Jonise pertinebat senatores, quos syne- 



dros vocant, legendos esse, quorum oon- 
silio respublica administraretur." 
f Ant. , xiv. 9, § 4. 



70 THE BERTH AOT> CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

tion existed between the Council of Moses and the Sanhedrim 
Our reception of this number is to be based upon the tradition 
of the Jews, which has its probability increased by the sug- 
gestion that the modern Council would, as far as possible, have 
been formed upon the model of that of Moses. 

The President was styled " Nasi," and was chosen on account 
of his eminent worth and wisdom, and was supposed to occupy 

Its President ^ G P^ ace °^ Moses. Sometimes the High-Priest 
had this honor. At the condemnation of Jesus 
the High-Priest was presiding, as we learn from Matt. xxvi. 62. 
The Vice-President was called " Ab-Beth-Din," and sat at the 
right hand of the President. The Babylonian G-emara states that 
there were two scribes, one to record the votes of acquittal and 
one those of condemnation. The lictors, or attendants of the 
Sanhedrim, are called vnr { geTai, in Matt. xxvi. 58, and in Mark xiv. 
54. While in session the Sanhedrim sat in form of a semicircle 
in the front of the President. 

The place of the meeting of the Sanhedrim, it is supposed, was 

in a building near the Temple ; but that it might be assembled 

elsewhere we learn from Matt. xxvi. 3, when 

meeting- ^ seems ^° nave me t in the residence of the 

High-Priest. 

The jurisdiction of this body was mainly over questions of 
religion, as the trial of a tribe for idolatry, the trial of false 

it ' ' di t' prophets, and of the High-Priest,* and other 
priests. \ Jesus was arraigned as a false prophet,:); 
and Peter, John, Stephen, and Paul, as teachers of pestilential 
errors. Its jurisdiction seems to have extended beyond Palestine. 
The power of capital punishment was taken from this body forty 
years before the destruction of Jerusalem.§ It was for this rea- 
son the Jews answered Pilate : " It 2s not lawful for us to put any 
man to death." (John xix. 31.) The Sanhedrim arrested, tried, 
convicted, and then handed the condemned over to the secular 
power, represented by the Poman procurator. There appears an 
exception (in Acts vii. 56, etc.) in the case of Stephen : but that 
was "a tumultuous proceeding or an illegal assumption of 



* Mislma, Sanhedr. L \ % That is, according to the Jerusa 

f Middoth, v. lem Gemara, quoted by Selden, book 

J John xi. 47. i ii., chap. 5, 11. 



PUBLIO AFFAIRS DURING THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 71 

power," as the execution of James in the absence of the procura- 
tor is declared by Josephus* to have been. 

The religious sects of the day were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, 
and the Essenes. We shall soon see that the ministry of Jesus 
was antagonistic to all these, and in studying that antagonism we 
shall more clearly understand the distinctive tenets and tempers 
of these several religionists. It is sufficient in this place to ren- 
der a mere synopsis. 

The Pharisees (separatists, as their name implies) were the Puri- 
tans of the time, claiming superior sanctity. They taught that 

tradition was as binding as the written law : that ™ . 

& ' Pharisees. 

God must have communicated much religious 
truth to Moses orally, as the people generally held, and had from 
time immemorial held, certain doctrines to be as well settled as 
the law, although they are not mentioned in the Pentateuch, of 
which prayer and the resurrection of the dead are notable in- 
stances, and that this oral law was as binding as the written law. 
The classical passage in the Mishna f on this subject is the follow- 
ing: "Moses received the (oral) law from Sinai, and delivered 
it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the pro- 
phets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue." 
They held themselves to be in the succession and to have the right 
to interpret and apply the law. They had become the most ex- 
treme ritualists. They were formalists. They had smothered 
spiritual religion to death under ceremonials. They laid on the 
conscience " burdens too heavy for men to bear." 

The Sadducees were a sect owing their existence to a reaction 
against Pharisaic teaching. The Sadducees held that the oral law 

was not at all binding, that nothing* was binding A -, 

=>' to & Sadducees. 

except the written law. To them it was a logical 
consequence to deny a future state of rewards and punishments. 
As in the written law, in all the pleadings of the great lawgiver 
for good living, and in all his threatenings against evil-doing, 
Moses had never called to his aid the consolation of the doctrine 
of future rewards nor the terror of future punishments, it seemed 
to them inconceivable that he should have believed in any such 
doctrine. They proceeded to deny the immortality of the soul, 
and then the existence of the soul itself. * They believed in 
neither angel nor spirit. 

* Antiq. , xx. 9, § 1. | f Quoted in Smith's Dictionary. 



72 THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 

The Essenes represented rather a tendency than a sect. But 
they grew into a community. They separated themselves from 
« the distraction of business. They were Pharisees 

in doctrine, in general terms ; but they held to* 
wards the Pharisees very much the relation which the Pharisees 
maintained toward the mass of the common people. They were 
the Quakers of the day of Jesus. They opposed wai and slavery 
and commerce. They were monks, ascetics, mystics. They ex- 
erted little influence on Christianity, and Jesus made no special 
allusion to them. His life and doctrine did not accord with their 
views and practices. 

The Herodians were a politico-religious sect or party. Herod 
the Great was of foreign descent, but was a Jew in his religious 
professions. There were many Jews who saw no 
way to sustain the national independence, in face 
of the Poman power, except in the continuance of the reign of 
Herod ; and, as they believed that the preservation of their nation- 
ality was necessary to the glory of their destiny, they would sup- 
port Herod, in whom they saw a protection against direct heathen 
rule. Others were quite willing to have a compromise between 
the old Hebrew faith and the culture of the Pagans, such as 
Herod seemed to be making. The political wing of the Hero- 
dians would side with the Pharisees, and the religious wing with 
the Sadducees. But the Herodians seem never to have attempted 
to harmonize the doctrines of the two sects. It is, perhaps, more 
nearly proper to call the Herodians a coalition than a party or a 
sect. 



PAET II. 

INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC 
MINISTRY. 

FROM A.D. 26 TO A.D. 27— ABOUT ONE YEAR. 



CHAPTER I, 



John, called " the Baptist," performed a ministry in Judaea 

which certainly opened the way for the public work of Jesus, 

and hence he is spoken of as the Harbinger. 

Of the wonderful circumstances attending the . * ,' m .7. 

& l. ; Luke in. 

birth of this very extraordinary man we have 
already spoken. In his case, as in that of his cousin Jesus, a 
silence covers the years of his youth. His marvellous birth, and 
the manner in which he obtained his name, must have had a great 
effect upon the character of the child, making his very boyhood 
and youth sacred and solemn. He grew up in the study of the 
law, grieved at the spiritual deadness of his times, and the hard 
conventionalities which had enervated the heart of the nation. 
Upon his spirit must have fallen, also, the influence of the gen- 
eral expectation of a Mighty One, a Messiah, a Deliverer. His 
nation had pondered the strange intimations of the prophets, and 
the uprising of Elijah in their midst would not have been to 
them a surprising event. 

If Moses be excepted, there was no figure among all the 
mighty men of their earlier history who filled so large space in 
the Hebrew mind, and filled it so solemnly, as 
Elij ah. To their imagination he was colossal. To 
the modern mind he is " the grandest and most romantic charac- 



74 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



ter that Israel ever produced." * His history fascinates us. " Hig 
rare, sudden, and brief appearances, — his undaunted courage and 
fiery zeal, — the brilliancy of his triumphs, — the pathos of his des- 
pondency, — and the glory of his departure, — threw such a halo of 
brightness around him as is equalled by none of his compeers in 
the sacred story." f H e nas been well called "Prodigiosus Thes- 
bites " X — the prodigious Tishbite. It is noticeable that the very 
last sentence which fell from the lips of Prophecy, before they 
were sealed into silence, contained the prediction of the reap- 
pearance of Elijah (Malachi iv. 5, 6) ; and whenever any man 
of extraordinary power appeared, it seemed to the Jews, in their 
political troubles and degradation, that Elijah had come. 

Such was their expectation when this holy JSTazarite, John, fol- 
lowing the example of many good men who were discouraged by 
the degeneracy of the times, retired to the desert 
region beyond the Jordan and gave himself to 
the self-discipline of meditation and prayer. 
After years of stern training the hour of his manifestation came, 
and he broke upon the world with preaching that roused the nation. 
His appearance was not comely. His physique had none of the 
plumpness, his complexion none of the richness, which comes 
from generous diet. His food was locusts § and wild honey. His 
dress was removed as far as possible from the elegance of fashion 
and the pomp of office ; it was a vestment of camel's hair,] bound 
about his waist by a leathern girdle. His address was blunt and 
brusque. He held no office and had no official sanction. He 
was not a priest, nor a rabbi. As De Pressense well says : " It 
was not priests or doctors that were wanting ; the very spirit of 



John's 
cration. 



* Stanley, S. and P., 328. 

f Smith's Diet. , Art. Elijah. 

% Acta Sanctor. 

§ The dicpig, permitted to be eaten 
(Levit. xi. 22), was used as food by the 
lower orders in Judsea, and mentioned 
by Strabo and Pliny as eaten by the 
Ethiopians, and by many other authors 
as articles of food. Jerome, adv. Jo- 
vinian, 2, 6, says: " Apud Orientales et 
Libyse populos quia per desertam et 
calidam eremi vastitatem locustarem 
nubes reperiuntur, locustis vesci moris 
est : hoc verum esse Joannes quoque 



Baptista probat." Shaw found locusts 
eaten by the Moors in Barbary . ( Travels, 
p. 164.) Seel Sam. xiv. 25. Here again 
there is no need to suppose anything 
else meant but honey made by wild bees. 
| The garment of camel's hair was 
not the camel's skin with the hair on, 
which would be too heavy to wear, but 
raiment woven of camel's hair, such as 
Josephus speaks of (B. J. i. 24, 3). 
From Zech. xiii. 4, it seems that such a 
dress was known as the prophetic garb : 
" Neither shall they (the prophets) weal 
a rough garment to deceive." 



John's preaching and ministry. 75 

Judaism was stifled under rites and traditions. It was this spirit 
that had to be reanimated and freed from all that oppressed it." 
For this work John needed, as he took, a free, broad space. 

His ministry is remarkable for the absence of two things, 
namely, miracles and an organization. He pretended to no 
miracle ; he formed no school. Of the multitudes 

, , i • t • l • 'ii John's ministry. 

who came to him, some remained in his neighbor- 
hood and gained what benefit they could from his society and his 
teaching. But he did not add another sect to the Pharisees, the 
Sadducees, and the Essenes. He was simply a preacher, a herald. 

As to his style, two things are to be noticed : 

1. His earnestness. He believed that he had a great message 
to his generation. He could not forbear. He had no specially 
favorable position for its delivery, but it was in 
him and it grew, and it became too large and 
strong for him to hold, and there was room in the wilderness and 
he went there " crying." One can fancy that he cried and cried 
until a stray traveller across the wilderness heard him, listened, 
went and reported the sound ; and another came and heard, and 
reported the strange voice crying in the wilderness ; and they 
that went alone hung timidly on the outskirts of the desert, and 
held their hands behind their ears to catch the flying sounds, and 
trembled as they heard the cry, " Repent ! Repent ! " then drew 
near in groups and beheld the strange wild man who, when he 
saw them, opened his great eyes wide upon them, and cried, " Re- 
pent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Frightened, they 
fled. But there is a fascination in earnestness. The tones of the 
prophet's voice rang in their ears whether they waked or slept, 
and they could not stay away. And when they went again he 
cried, " Bring forth fruits meet for repentance." He was in full 
earnest. He believed that before he came Isaiah heard him with 
his own prophetic ears, and exclaimed, " Hark ! a voice is crying 
in the wilderness ! " 

2. The message was indiscriminate. The crowds of common 
people drew the great and learned to this powerful preacher. 
He had no compliments for the rabbis, no gallant speeches 
for the ladies, no politic utterances for the powerful. He saw 
before him men and women, full of sin, concealed from them- 
selves by their conventionalities, and he thundered the truth 
at them indiscriminately. They had Abraham to their father 



76 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

and needed no special moral illumination, certainly no spiritual 

regeneration — so they thought of themselves. But he believed 

that they did need spiritual regeneration, and believed that that 

regeneration was the most important thing in all the world. 

The matter of his preaching we gather from the few notices in 

the Evangelists. 

,. Matthew reports him as saying, " Repent ye : 

preaching. r J & ' r J 

for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (iii. 2.) 

" But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to 

his baptism, he said unto them, i O generation of 
Matthew's re- ii.lt i A n ji i 

vipers, who hath warned you to nee from the 

wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits 
meet for repentance : and think not to say within yourselves, We 
have Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, that God is able 
of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now 
also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every 
tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast 
into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance : 
but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am 
not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, 
and with fire : whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly 
purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he will 
burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.' " (iii. 7-13.) 

Mark says that he preached, saying, "There cometh one 
mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not 

worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed 

have baptized you with water : but he shall bap- 
tize you with the Holy Ghost." (i. 7, 8.) 

Lake reports that he said to the multitude that came forth to 
be baptized of him, " i O generation of vipers, who hath warned 

you to flee from the wrath to come ? Bring forth 
u repo . ^heref ore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin 
not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father : 
for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up 
children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the 
root of the trees : every tree therefore which bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.' And the people 
asked him, saying, ' What shall we do then ? ' He answered 
and said unto them, ' He that hath two coats, let him impart tc 
him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.' 



John's preaching and ministry. 77 

Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, 
' Master, what shall we do ? ' And he said unto them, < Exact 
no more than that which is appointed you.' And the soldiers 
likewise demanded of him, saying, < And what shall we do % ' 
And he said unto them, ' Do violence to no man, neither accuse 
any falsely ; and be content with your wages.' And as the 
people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of 
John, whether he were the Christ, or not ; John answered, saying 
unto them all, ' I indeed baptize you with water ; but one migh- 
tier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to 
unloose : he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire : 
whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, 
and will gather the wheat into his garner ; but the chaif he will 
burn with fire unquenchable.' " (iii. 7-17.) 

John the Evangelist, speaking of John the Baptist, says :-*» 
i( And this is the record of John when the Jews sent priests and 
Levi tea from Jerusalem to ask him, ' Who art 
thou?' And he confessed, and denied not: but .. ., 

7 . 7 gelist s report. 

confessed, ' I am not the Christ. And they 

asked him, < What then % Art thou Elias ? ' And he saith, £ 1 

am not.' ' Art thou that Prophet % ' And he answered, ' ISTo.' 

Then said they unto him, l Who art thou % that we may give an 

answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?' 

He said, ' I am the voice of one crying 'in the wilderness, Make 

straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.' — And 

they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked 

him, and said unto him, ' Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not 

that Christ, nor Elias, neither that Prophet % ' John answered 

them, saying, ' I baptize with water : but there standeth one 

among you, whom ye know not : he it is, who coming after me 

is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to 

unloose.' " (i. 19-27.) 

It will be seen that this startling preacher not only trampled 

under foot all prejudices as to appearance and style, but also that 

he spared no prejudice of national pride or eccle- 

. ,-i -i , , t -i Substance of hia 

siastical precedent or ancient creed or modern ^. 

r m Discourses. 

rationalism. Let us analyze these very brief re- 
ports of his discourses and see what the substance was. 

1. His most impressive discourses seemed to be of repentance. 
This he pressed upon the people of all classes vehemently. It was 



78 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

not to be a mere outward reformation, an abandonment of noto- 
rious sin — nor simply the observance of strict 
Repentance. -i r» t** , i -n , • -r-r i 

rules oi lire, mere external purification, lie knew 

nothing of the dogma of sin resident in the flesh, and of the 
theory of purifying the life by lacerating the body, or by reduc- 
ing it by ascetic observances. He had a mission to others, not a 
humiliating work to perform on himself, like the Jewish masses 
that were around him in the desert. He tore conventionalities 
and creeds and orthodoxies to shreds, and flung them to the winds. 
He went at once into the inmost man, and insisted that his hear- 
ers should make a total change of their minds in every depart- 
ment — in intellections, in emotions, in volitions. He knew that if 
this internal rectification could be secured everything necessary 
in the outward life would follow, " fruits meet for repentance." 
So when the people asked for more distinct instruction he gave 
it without vagueness. He had the art of discovering just where 
the fester was in the sore, and the great surgical talent of bold 
yet skilful probing. Even the publicans — that most hated 
class — were drawn to him. He told them plainly that they 
should exact no more than they were authorized to require. This 
was their besetting sin, greatly nourished by their position, which 
gave them so much opportunity to enrich themselves by oppres- 
sing others without being called to account. — There were soldiers 
in the neighborhood. And they flocked to hear this strange 
preacher, and asked for instruction. He warned them against 
their well-known vices, charging them to assault no one ; nor 
accuse any of the people to their superiors on frivolous pre- 
tences ; nor be discontented with their wages. 

It is to be observed that John, radical as he was, and reformer, 
made no assault upon the existing institutions of society. He was 
a radical not in the sense of tearing everything up by the roots, 
but of improving all growing things by purifying the roots. In 
this particular we shall see that Jesus resembled him. 

2. He preached against the formalism and the scepticism of the 

times, the phariseeism and sadduceeism that divided the ruling 

minds of his nation. This led him to deal roughly 

Against formal- w ^ ^ e c h er j s h e ol traditional religion of his peo- 

dsm ^ 3CeP 1_ P^ e ' -^ e ^ad as ^^ e a PP rec i a tion for this as he 

had for sacerdotal succession. Men are not to be 

drilled and marched in platoons. The business of life is individ- 



John's preaching and ministry. 79 

ual culture in holiness. No man does a great thing in any proces- 
sion or succession. He must step out. He is not to fancy, because 
it is a fact that he is descended from Abraham, that he is all that lie 
should be. The stern preacher looked at the shingle of pebbles and 
stones at his feet, and laughed their traditional claims to scorn by 
exclaiming, " Children of Abraham are you ? God can of these 
stones raise up children to Abraham." It is difficult to conceive 
at this distance and with our culture how shocking such a 
statement must have sounded in Jewish ears. As members of 
the theocracy they held that they had a prescriptive right to a 
place in the kingdom of the coming Messiah when he should 
arrive. And they believed that that kingdom would be restricted 
to their nation. There was a broad dash of liberalism in John's 
discourses. It hit the formal Pharisee and the unspiritual Sad- 
ducee equally hard to be told that God could, by his Spirit, out of 
stones raise up children to Abraham ; as if he had said, " God is 
able to transform the most uncultivated portions of the human 
race into a people of highest spiritual character and prospects." 

3. He announced an approaching kingdom, and called it " the 
kingdom of the heavens." If the kingdom were to be such as 
they and their fathers had expected, there had 
then been no need of " change of mind " repent- nn ^ e \ 

' . L coming kingdom. 

ance. They longed for a kingdom of earth, whose 
mighty Ruler should be to them a deliverer from everj foreign 
yoke. He was to be revealed from heaven with great wonders, 
resuscitate the race of Abraham, subjugate the Roman power to the 
Jewish theocracy, carry a war of triumph against all the Gentiles — 
all nations that were not Jews — and then establish a personal reign 
of a thousand years, in which the Jewish people were to reach 
a condition of unimaginable splendor. John plainly told them 
that that was all nonsense. That, so far from that being the case, 
the axe was already laid to the root of the tree of their nation 
and religion, and that in a little while, if no sign of an inward 
life appeared, that whole tree, deep as its roots had struck, and 
wide as its branches had waved, would be cut down. It was 
inward spiritual life which God required in every man. The 
kingdom was to be a spiritual kingdom, in which the will of each 
man was to be conformable to the will of God, a kingdom which 
was to cover earth with heaven and obliterate the distinction of 
6acred and profane. 



80 



INTKODUCTION" OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MTNISTET. 



startling 



Announces the 
presence of the 



Ruler. 



4. He declared the nearness of that kingdom, and made the 
announcement to his hearers that the .Ruler in that 
kingdom was then actually standing, unknown, 
in their very midst ! He magnified that Euler, 
and spoke of himself in contrast as quite the 
most humble of persons. He was not worthy to 
untie and carry the shoes * of that Potentate. That Kuler was 
mightier than he. He baptized only with water; the Coming One 
should baptize with fire. He was no one, — not Christ, — not Elias, 
— nothing — but a Yoice. The committee that waited on him from 
the Sanhedrim catechised him closely as to the nature of his 
%)erson, that which is most important to narrow people. He made 
no allusion to the subject of their inquiries in his replies, but 
always spoke of his office and work, as being, to the broad view 
of a liberal mind, a much more important subject. The Coming 
One stood with his fan in his hand. He should blow away from 
the threshing-floor of earth all chaff, all that — whatsoever it was 
— which had been useful in the rearing of the real wheat, but 
being no longer useful, whether it be ceremonial or philosophic, 
he would burn in a fire which none that loved the chaff could by 
any means extinguish. Chaff should not be. That was settled. 
So, have done with chaff and appreciate wheat. Address your- 
selves, he seemed to say, to practical living of lives of .inward 
purity, of justice, mercy, and humility. Be ready for this king- 
dom of heaven which lies all about you, like a sea about an 
island below its level, an island from which the inrush of the sea 
is prevented by dikes. Make a crevasse in all your old high 
piled traditionary prejudices, and the kingdom of heaven will 
sweep in. 

That seemed to be the substance of the matter of his preach- 



To preaching he united a rite of baptism. Perhaps the origin 

of baptism can never be discovered. The wash- 
Baptism. c , , , 

mg 01 the outer man seems always and every- 
where to have been considered as somehow emblematic cf the purifi 



* The expression, "whose shoe's 
latchet I am not worthy to unloose," 
has its force intensified by comparison 
with a passage in the Talmud : " Every 



office a servant will do for his master 
a scholar should perform for his teach- 
er, excepting loosing- his sandal thong. v 
— Tract. Kidduschin, xxii. 2. 



John's preaching and ministry. 



81 



cation of the spirit.* Much discussion has been had by the learned 
on the question whether John's baptism was equivalent to the bap- 
tism of proselytes ; but it has not been settled whether that was 
introduced before or after the ministry of John. But through all 
the Mosaic law and ritual there ran the idea of a connection be- 
tween the filth of the body and the impurity of the soul, and the 
Jewish mind was familiar with the thought of effects attributed 
to a rite which involved the application of water for the removal 
of unhealthy taints. The Pharisees and Sadducees are represented 
as coming to the baptism of John, — but not the Essenes. A large 
part of their religion consisted in frequent ablution of the body. 
And so, when John began to preach spiritual holiness, it is not won- 
derful that he should adopt and administer the rite of baptism. 
But it was not Christian baptism, of course, as Christianity was 
not yet inaugurated. It did not rise to the height of a sacrament. 
But it must have had a deeper significance than any baptism pre- 
viously known to the Jews, and John's specific instruction must 
have unfolded that deeper meaning. 

A very great use of John's baptism — perhaps it was so designed 
— was that it broke through all priestism, all churchism, all ritual- 
ism. He was a private person. He was, as to his ministry, in no 
" succession." He had no ecclesiastical position, no " authority." 
But he baptized. The rite, as he administered it, was private. He 
was breaking up the soil for a new kingdom which was to be very 
free and spiritual, for a new form of the ever-during church that 
was to have no priesthood, no close corporation of authorized dis- 
pensers of truth or pardon. And so he baptized. He that had no 
more " right " than any other man, used an ordinance indicative 
of spiritual purification. 

After all, the ministry of John — brief , vehement, attractive, and 
powerful as it was — seemed to have had little permanent effect 
upon his generation. It was like a rushing mountain torrent that 



* Milman says {Hist. Christianity, 
Book i., chap, iii.) : " The sacred 
Ganges cleanses all moral pollution from 
the Indian ; among the Greeks and Ro- 
mans even the murderer might, it was 
supposed, wash the blood dean from his 
hands ■; and (in many of their religious 
rites) lustrations or ablutions, either in 

6 



the running stream or in the sea, puri- 
fied the candidate for divine favor, and 
made him fit to approach the shrines of 
the gods." He quotes the lines of 
Ovid: — 

' ' Ah nimium f aciles, qui tristia crimina 
csedis, 
Tolli fluminea posse putatis aqul' 



82 



INTRODUCTION OP JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



permanently 
fective, 



moved some stones and floatwood, and cnt a channel deeper, but 
soon passed away. " For a season " the mass 
His ministry not f the people rejoiced in him; and such a hold 
e " had he secured upon the popular mind that the 
Pharisees did not dare to deny the divine au- 
thority of his mission when they were publicly questioned by 
Jesus. But the people's passion is not steady. They were falling 
away from the high excitement to which the sudden thunders of 
John's arousing preaching had flung them. Bishop Ellicott elo- 
quently says : " We may with reason believe that the harbinger's 
message might have arrested, aroused, and awakened ; but that 
the general influence of that baptism of water was comparatively 
limited, and that its memory would soon have died away if He 
that baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire had not invested 
it with a new and more vital significance. John struck the first 
chords, but the sounds would have soon died out into silence if a 
mightier hand had not swept the yet vibrating strings." — Histor- 
ical Lectures, p. 105. 

In following regularly the career of Jesus we shall come upon 
an occasion when he gave his estimate of the character of John. 



CHAPTEE II. 

.TESTIS DESIGNATED AT HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 

Jesus now comes forward from his long obscurity. We have 
seen him only once before since his infancy. Now he comes to 
the Jordan to be baptized of John. Let ns col- 

. . , Jesus reappears. 

late the records. Matt m , Mark L 

Matthew's account (iii. 13) is this: "Then cometh Jesns from 
Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John 
forbade him, saying : ' I have need to be baptized of thee, and! 
comest thou to meV And Jesus answering said unto him, 'Suffer 
it to be so now : for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.' 
Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went 
up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened 
unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, 
and lighting upon him : and lo a voice from heaven, saying, i This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' " 

Mark (i. 9) says: "It came to pass in those days, that Jesus 
came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jor- 
dan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the 
heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him : 
and there came a voice from heaven, saying, 'Thou art my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' " 

Lukds narrative (iii. 21) is this: "Now when all the people were 
baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and pray- 
ing, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in 
a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from 
heaven, which said, 'Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well 
pleased.' " 

Luke adds (verse 23) : "And Jesus himself began to be about 
thirty years of age." 

John does not give a narrative of the ceremony of the baptism, 
but records the testimony of John the Baptist (i. 29). 

Here is the fact that Jesus was baptized of John in Jordan. To 
tliis all the four New Testament historians testify. They give nc 



84 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

intimation of the place. That was not important. In the open- 
ing of the public ministry of Jesus we may take 
Jesus comes to occasion to say that nowhere do we find these four 
John ^ J wr it ers striving to make out a case, striving tc 

agree in details of narrative, or ministering any- 
thing to superstition. ~No portrait, no autograph, no description oi 
the physique of Jesus is preserved by them. They do not attempt 
to invest any place in which he did anything with a sacredness 
which should make it the focus of superstition. But they tell 
their story with the artlessness of guileless children, and leave the 
impression to deepen and brighten in the mind of the reader. 
We shall strive to deal with the case in the same spirit of simple 
unaffected reverence for Nature and Supernature, feeling that we 
have no more right to ignore the one than to set aside the other. 

The fact that Jesus submitted voluntarily to John's baptism is 
wholly unaccountable on certain dogmas long assumed to be un- 
questionable. The commentators who adopt these 
Why Jesus was d g mas f H w one another in a dreary march 

baptized. ° . J 

around what they suppose to be a difficulty, which 

they really make into a difficulty for other minds, but which they 

do not remove. The simple statement of John himself ought to 

throw much light on the subject. He says, "that he should he 

made known to Israel; therefore am I come baptizing with 

water." That seems quite explicit. The hope of a Messiah was 

intensifying its element of expectation when John's ministry 

opened. He felt the depths of his great nature stirred with a 

call to arouse his people to a preparation of heart for the great 

Advent. He did not entertain those thoroughly spiritualistic 

views of the Messiah's kingdom which have since obtained. He 

believed in his personal reign, a great spiritual improvement, a 

discrimination, a dividing, a burning up the chaff of his own 

nation, a cleansing of the Jewish people for the establishment of 

a purified theocracy to be administered by The Christ in proper 

person. 

It was not simply the kingdom he was to announce, but the 

kino;. Something in this man's soul told him that in the course 

of his ministry of heralding the kingdom the 
Certain mistakes. ,. ■. ,-,, -i-i,!* j ^ 7 1 n 

king should be revealed to mm, and lie should 
point oui; that being to his people, and that there his ministry was 
virtually to cease. Upon the inauguration of Jesus, John was 




1 ' |,l!l ■'■ -'^ISHWS 



JEStJS DESIGNATED AT HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 85 

functus officio. Jesus did not come to John for instruction, surely 
Every reader of the history, who reads it even in the most com- 
mon human way, must see that as a teacher the man Jesus was 
superior to the man John. He did not come to him to be bap- 
tized with a baptism of repentance, change of mind, for he had 
held these views of the spiritual theocracy as long as John had. 
He was at least John's fellow-prophet of the coming kingdom. 
He had thrown no obstacles in the way. He was not a priest, a 
conventionalist, a ritualist, a fossilized conservative of decent 
heterodoxes. It was not a sacrament that John was to administer 
to. him. It was not an induction into a priestly .office. The bap 
tism administered by John to Jesus had no precedent and was 
not a precedent. It was a singular act and fact in human his- 
tory. The Man who was to be the Ruler of the human mind in 
the ages to come, and was to ascend to the highest throne in the 
kingdom of thought; the Man who was to be the Huler of the 
human heart in the ages to come, so that no one was to be so 
deeply, highly, tenderly, reverently loved as He, — this man was 
the Son of Mary. He had been ordained to this place in the 
harmonious arrangement of the universe, and hence is called the 
Christus. The time for his inauguration had come. He was to 
be revealed to the world through the ministry of John. 

One needs to be very tender and thoughtful as one studies this 
great passage ; great not only in the history of Jesus, but in the 
history of the world ; for the history of all humanity was from 
this time forth to be changed by him. Whatever there is of fact 
should be studied with historical discrimination, and whatever 
there is of poetry, wonder, awe, and beauty, should, if possible, 
be studied w T ith poetic appreciation. 

It has been well said that — 

"It is of manifest importance that what we see we should see clearly. We 
are not indeed to require, as an absolute condition of faith, that we should be 
able to see, or even to image distinctly to the mind, the 
thing in which we are to believe. Because there are things ^ff^ of distinct 

° ° mental picture. 

which, from their very nature, do not admit of being pic- 
tured even to the imagination, such as God or one's own soul. (See Edinburgh 
Rev., vol. xlvi., p. 339, Eng. ed.) But when the matter proposed is confessedly 
an object of sense, a scene that addresses the eye, clear vision is supremely 
desirable. We may not ask to see those things which eye hath never seen and 
can never see. But of that which professes visibility, let us have the distinct- 
est sight. Accordingly, it is necessary to a due faith in the Baptism of Jesus, 



86 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

with its attendant circumstances as a fact, that it should be distinctly repre 
sented to the mind. With this understanding, and a single desire to appre- 
hend the actual state of the case, what it was that occurred on this occasion, 
let us examine the above account." — Jesus and his Biographers, by Furness, p. 
147. 

Jesus came voluntarily to John's baptism uninvited. Had 
John seen him before ? Possibly several times : they were kins- 
men. Probably seldom : they lived apart in a 

John's previous ., , . • , . , 

acquaintance. country not very easily traversed m their day. 

Possibly never. There is no history. John says 
(John i. 31), " I knew him not." This may mean one of two* 
things : either that he had no knowledge of the person of Jesus, 
so that he should recognize him on sight, or that he did not know 
that this was the wonderful Being whose arrival his great life- 
work was to announce ; did not know that he was the "Erkome- 
nos" the Coming Man, until certain wonderful phenomena made 
the whole plain to his mind. 

The submission of Jesus to the baptism of John was another 
blow at churchism, priestism, and all that form of thought 

which attempts to run the streams of God's gra- 

k blow at church- . . ., , . 1 . , , T 

ism ciousness through ecclesiastical aqueducts. Jesus 

was a layman. So was John. Jesus was about 
to begin the Ministry of Grace, to assume the kingliness of the 
Power of Purity. He did not order the conduct of the pomp 
of the inauguration at Imperial Pome, nor at Sacerdotal Jerusa- 
lem. Not in palace, not in temple ! He went out into the open 
air, under the open sky, beside the running stream. He would 
not have lictors and chamberlains and priests about him. A 
rough, unlearned layman, exhorting the people to be ready for 
him, that was a sufficient herald. He was going to lay the world 
open to goodness and to God. He was going to rend the veil of 
the temple and of all temples. He was going to abolish heredi- 
tary religions and tear away whatever stood between God and 
man, whether it were temple veil or erroneous thought, a chancel 
rail or a dogma, or a rubric or a canon, — whatever stood between 
the Father and the Child he was to destroy. He was never to use the 
phrase " The Church " in all his ministry. His kingdom was to 
be inclusive, not exclusive. His people were to be every man a king 
and every man a priest, a royal priesthood, a holy generation that 
should know no distinction between " clergyman " and " layman." 



JESUS DESIGNATED AT HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 87 

When Jesus approached John for baptism, the latter hesitated 
If he had never seen him before, or not since early childhood 
there was something in the appearance of Jesus 
which arrested his attention. He was not like to baptize Jesua 
die people who usually nocked to his ministry. 
There must have been a remarkable absence of traces of world- 
liness, — world-care, world-sorrow, world-passion, — on the brow of 
this rare young man, who had grown up under influences so pure 
from a birth so marvellous. He must have looked like one who 
had always been in " the kingdom of the heavens," the coming of 
which John was preaching. Why should lie be baptized ? With 
all his vehemence and power, the great-hearted John was modest. 
When he looked at Jesus he declined to baptize him, and said, 
" I have need to be baptized of you : and do you come to me? " 

The reply of Jesus was simple and decisive : " Suffer it now : 

for tints it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness." As though he 

had said, "Whatever you perceive which you ^ , , T 

' . . . Reply of Jesus, 

think is against your baptizing me, proceed with 

the rite, and you shall then know something beyond. If you are 

divinely moved to believe that in the regular discharge of your 

ministry of preparation the Anointed One is to be revealed to 

you, your obvious duty is to go forward baptizing every comer 

until HE come. If there be anything in me, in all my previous 

growth, in all the development of my soul, that predicts for me 

and to myself a great and solemn destiny, I must not refuse a 

baptism of heralding the kingdom of the heavens. If your 

work be of God, O humble layman, and I have come from God, 

I must make no divergence, and no opposition, but go through 

with it, and then it shall come to pass that I shall be revealed to 

you, and shall be certified in my own soul of that calling of which 

from earliest childhood I have had growing intimations." 

How much of this Jesus said, or whether he said merely what 
is recorded in the text, and looked the rest, we cannot know. But 
John knew the history of his birth and the marvels thereon at- 
tending. And he baptized him. 

It was a momentous crisis for both parties. John was to have 
a sign of the Messiah when the Messiah should 
appear. Jesus was to come to the fulness of the 
perception of his place in the world and the 
world's history. Others went down to the water confessing, and 



88 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

came up shouting. He descended in solemn silence, and as 
cended from the river with face upturned in worship. 

Then occurred a phenomenon mentioned by all the historians, 

Something like a dove descended upon Jesus. That much is 

The descending P atent > what else we ma J discover by rereading 
dove. tne passages. We must either accept these books 

as histories or reject them. I accept. They must 
then be dealt with as other histories, and what is marvellous must 
no more be explained away than what is commonplace. What 
was this that appeared " like a dove ? " All the four historians 
use that same phrase, whatever may be their variations elsewhere 
I believe it was actually a dove. If I were to read four accounts 
of the coronation of a king, in all which there was represented 
that something " like a dove " descended upon him, I should say 
" It was a dove." I say so here. 

Eow, let us bring the scene and the personages clearly before 
as. We are standing beside Jordan. Here is a powerful, masterly 

John and Jesus. man Proclaiming a coming kingdom. And here 
is a man who is to take the lead of all the world's 
men, upon whom as never upon any other there had come gifts 
of insight, purity, and elevation of character. John does not 
know this of Jesus, as later men shall know it. He knows him 
a child miraculously born, in whose early history there had 
been passages not common in human biography. He is looking 
daily for the Christ of God, the Anointed of Jehovah. He feels 
that Jesus is his superior. On sight he acknowledges that superi- 
ority. What must have been the face of that man whose pres- 
ence hushes the outspoken John, that John whom mobs of sol- 
diers and peasants, and crowds of rabbis, and committees of 
Sanhedrims only roused into intenser name of hatred against sin ! 
He that is higher than John is on the pinnacle of all that is hu- 
man. The man that overawes John has the mastery of humanity. 

With what intense excitement must John have gazed upon 
Jesus ! And when Jesus came up from the water, praying, trans- 
figured with his own intense intellectual and spir- 

John the discov- ., -i .. , •.'.., « r , 

ltual excitement, it was a moment or rapt awe 
erer or Jesus. ' . \ 

to both. At that instant a dove descended on 
Jesus. Whence, no one saw. It seemed to come from heaven. 
John had had the assurance that a sign should be given him when 
the Messiah rose to his vision. He was advancing along the line 



JESUS DESIGNATED AT HIS BAPTISM BY JOHN. 89 

of his ministry when this remarkable state of affairs was come 
upon, namely ; a man of wondrous sanctity of appearance comes 
to his baptism ; John feels that this is his superior, and is com- 
pelled to acknowledge it; the candidate makes no confession; he 
comes from the water in a state of great spiritual exaltation ; a 
dove from parts unseen descends upon him. It was to John the 
Holy Spirit of the great Jehovah designating the expected and 
Anointed Deliverer, according to previous intimations. Now, if 
the presence of Jesus could have produced such an uprising of 
the mind of John, there must have been something divinely pow- 
erful in Jesus. It was John who was selected to discover the 
Messiah and to declare him to his generation. 

There was not only the -appearance of a dove out of the opening 
heavens, but the sound of a voice. The voice Avas not a mere 
rumble, as of thunder. There could have been 
no thunder-storm. It was clear in a rare degree, 
for the " heavens " were " opened." The sound was articulate. 
It was the vouchsafed sign. John heard it : " This is my beloved 
Son, in whom, lam well pleased." Jesus heard it: " Thou art 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased? 

Any theory may be set forth, but here are the facts. It may 
be said that it was an intense state of mental excitement which 
made these men hear what they supposed to be a 
voice. Suppose that. If God speak to you ar- f 
ticulately, just as a human being does, or prefer 
so to quicken your inward being that you receive thereon precise- 
ly such impressions as come to you ordinarily and normally 
through your senses, it is to you precisely the same. There is no 
difference in the result. All great souls that have dedicated 
themselves to great deeds of self-abnegation and heroism have 
felt, seen, heard powerful communications from the Great Cre- 
ator. Impressions are frequently made directly upon the mind 
without intervention of the organs of sense; and they seem just 
such as men are accustomed to receive through those organs ; and 
then they are spoken of as visions or voices, as the case may be. It 
is not a question of such vast concern in which way came this con- 
firmation to John. He was not a cold, hard materialist. He was 
a man of high-wrought spirituality. And Jesus was the finest 
piece of human organism of which any history gives us any ac- 
count. These men met in a circle of circumstances described by 



90 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



one of them. John says: " I saw, and hare record that this is 
the Son of God? If he was satisfied, surely we ought to be. Tt 
is as unphilosophic to be incredulous as to be superstitious. Men 
have no reward when they exert their intellects to reason them- 
selves out of their faith. Faith of what can be believed is as 
important as science of what can be known. 
Jesus thus inaugurated his public ministry. 




CHAPTEK III. 



THE TEMPTATION. 



Immediately after the exciting scene of Lis baptism, Jesns en- 
tered upon a fearful season of spiritual trial and depression. It 
is usually known as The Temptation. The history is given by 
Matthew and Luke, a brief statement being made by Mark also. 

Matthew's narrative is this : " Then was Jesus led up of the 
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when 
he had fasted forty days and forty nights, after- 
ward he huno-ered. And when the tempter came 

° r count. 

to him, he said, ' If thou art the Son of God, com- 
mand that these stones be made bread.' But he answered and 
said, ' It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on 
every word proceeding through the mouth of God.' Then the 
devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on the 
battlement of the temple, and saith to him, 'If thou art the Son 
of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his 
angels charge concerning thee : and upon their hands they shall 
bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.' 
Jesus said unto him, ' It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God.' Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding 
high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and 
the glory of them ; and said to him, ' All these things will I give 
thee, if falling down thou wilt do me homage.' Then saith Jesus 
unto him, c Go away, Satan : for it is written, Thou shalt do hom- 
age to the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou worship.' Then 
the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered 
unto him." (Matt. iv. 1-11.) 

All that Mark records is in ch. i. vv. 12, 13 : " And immedi- 
ately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. 
And he was there in the wilderness forty days ,!f, s f cc 
tempted of Satan ; and was with the wild beasts ; 
and the angels ministered unto him." 



92 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

St. Luke (iv. 1-13) gives an account of this transaction which 
is substantially the same as that of Matthew. 

It cannot now be known in what place this passage in the his- 
tory of Jesus occurred. Tradition assigns it to one of the moun- 
tains opposite Jericho, called now Quarantania, 
ace o e f rom the forty days of fasting, a name probably 
given it in the times of the Crusades. Thomson 
{Land and Book, vol. ii. p. 450) thus describes it: — 

" Directly west, at a distance of a mile and a half, is the high and precipi- 
tous mountain called Quarantania, from a tradition that our Saviour here 
fasted forty days and nights, and also that this is the 'high mountain ' from 
whose top the tempter exhibited ' all the kingdoms of this world, and the 
glory of them.' The side facing the plain is as perpendicular and apparently 
as high as the rock of Gibraltar, and upon the very summit are still visible 
the ruins of an ancient convent. Midway below are caverns hewn in the per- 
pendicular rock, where hermits formerly retired to fast and pray, in imitation 
of the 'forty days,' and it is said that even at the present time there is to be 
found an occasional Coptor Abyssinian languishing out his Quarantania in 
this doleful place." 

The general reader would be amazed to see the immense amount 
of literature there is upon the subject of the Temptation of Jesus. 
Through much of it we have painfully waded, to come back to 
the conclusion that the simplest way is to read the history in the 
light of common sense, and derive what lessons our present scien- 
tific culture may enable us to educe. 

It is obvious that the narrative is substantially made by Jesus. 
The historians could have gathered it from no other source. Un- 
less they made great blunders in understanding 
The narrative ^ statements, or in recording them, we have the 
whole affair before us as it appeared to the mind 
of Jesus, quite as nearly indeed as language can convey thought 
from one mind to another. 

It may be instructive to see how many views have been taken 

of this portion of the history of Jesus. They show how men 

allow themselves to interpret facts by dogmas, 

Explanatory an( ^ t j iat this is quite as common among sceptics 

theories. . , , , . . 

as among the credulous, — no more characteristic 
of the one than of the other, although generally charged vehe 
mently upon the latter by the former. 

1. It has been regarded as an external occurrence, and, as such, 



THE TEMPTATION. 



93 



(a) as real, the literal apparition of Satan in the form of a man or 
of an angel ; * (h) as a myth,f in which tradition invests the sym- 
bolical idea of a contest between Messiah and Satan ; or (c) as a 
narrative in symbolical language, the real tempter being a man.J 

2. It has been regarded as an internal occurrence; in other 
words, a vision: and, as such (a), as excited in the brain of Jesus 
by the Devil ;§ (h) as created by God;|| (c) as produced by natu- 
ral causes,!" or (d), as "a significant morning dream." *"* 

3. It has been considered an inward ethical transaction, or a 
psychological occurrence ; and, as such (a), a conflict in the imag- 
ination of Jesus ; ff (b) an inward conflict excited by the Devil ; ^ 
(c) a subjective (inward) transaction, to which the New Testament 
historians gave an objective (outward) form; or (d), as a frag- 
mentary, symbolical representation of transactions in the inner 
life of Jesus, grouped into one statement. §§ 

4. It has been considered as sparable, to instruct the disciples 
of Jesus as to their spiritual perils and remedies. ||| 

5. It has been pronounced a myth.*^ 

This classification and these references are given so that if 
there be any readers having time, patience, and curiosity enough, 
they may make a study of this subject for themselves. To many 
minds the refutation of these positions must have occurred as 
they have been stated. In all of them there are difficulties. 

The theories which involve the appearance of Satan in bodily 
form, whether of man or angel, are open to the objections (1), That 



* This is, I think, the view of most of 
the commentators who consider them- 
selves orthodox. 

f I need hardly say that this is the 
view of Dr. Strauss. 

% The man being-, as some hold, a 
member of the Jewish Sanhedrim. Ben- 
gel says : ' ' The tempter did not wish it 
to be known that he was Satan, yet 
Christ, at the conclusion of the inter- 
view, calls him Satan, after that Satan 
had plainly betrayed his satanifcy." He 
adds : " The tempter seems to have ap- 
peared under the form of a ypann<xT€vs, 
a scribe, since our Lord thrice replies to 
him by the word yey panrai, it is written. " 
See Gnomen N. T., vol. i. p. 149. 

§ This view was held by Origen, Cy- 



prian, Theodoras of Mopsuestia, Ols- 
hausen, and Hiibner. 

I Set forth by Farmer in his " Inquiry 
into the Nature and Design of Christ's 
Temptation in the Wilderness." Lon- 
don, 1761. 

Tf Prof. Paul us and many others. 

** Meyer, in the Studien u. Kritiken 
for 1831, p. 319. 

ff Eichhorn, Weisse, and others. 

XX Krabbe. 

§§ This is Neander's view. It may be 
regarded as a specimen of what Strauss 
well calls " the palliative theology." 

I I The opinion of Schleiermacher, 
Baumgarten-Crusius, etc. 

1"! Strauss, Meyer, De Wette, and aU 
that school of course give this solution, 



94 



INTRODUCTION OP JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



Satan nowhere else is so represented by these historians,* which, 
I acknowledge, may be very feeble as an ob- 
f " th J jection, but is noticeable in this connection ; and 

(2), That this theory is incompatible with the nar- 
rative ; as, for instance, the taking of Jesus to the pinnacle of the 
Temple and to the top of the mountain, and showing him all the 
kingdoms of the world in a moment, which no member of the 
Sanhedrim and no "scribe" would have essayed to do. The per- 
son who could have done so would have assumed the role of the 
Messiah himself, made aerial excursion in the presence of the 
multitude, and won all the eclat of a thaumaturgist. Moreover 
(3), According to this view, the Devil knew that the person he was 
tempting was divine ; and this fact greatly embarrasses the idea 
of a personal conflict between the two. So that it seems we must 
give up that theory. 

The idea of any myth forming itself in the Augustan age, be- 
tween the times of Livy' and Tacitus, and especially that of a 
theologic myth forming itself among the Jews, at 
the time of their history which is so near its close 
as this, is perfectly preposterous. One may safely challenge, I 
humbly think, any man of any amount of learning to point out 
any myth, or sign of a myth, which had its origin in any notable 
centre of political influence in any portion of the Roman Empire 
after the accession of Augustus to the imperial throne. One may 
challenge the whole school of myth-philosophers to indicate any- 
thing, aside from the history of Jesus, which gives evidence of 
mythical tendency even among the people of the Jews, at any 
time of their history after the beginning of the third century 
before the Christian era. Why then should the history of Jesus, 
and that alone, be interpreted against all known laws of mental 
progress ? Does any man ever apply the myth theory to the times 
of Julius Csesar or Pompey? A myth is the product of the child- 
hood of a people, and never survives the maturity of a nation, as 
a matter of belief, any more than the traditionary stories of fai- 
ries, wherewith we still allow the children of Europe and America 
to be amused, have power over the consciences of the people. 



The myth theory. 



* If the reader recalls John vi. 70, he 
must be reminded that Jesus calls Judas 
8iaj8o\o9, which is the generic substan- 
tive, " a devil," in the sense of " devil- 



ish." I do not recollect any case of a 
man being called 6 8ta#oAo?, the devil, 
Alford (Or. Test, in loco) says that no 
such case can be adduced. 



THE TEMPTATION. 95 

Among the Greeks and Romans the theologic myths which their 
early ancestors had originated were fast losing all respect among 
the uncultivated masses and the lower orders, as they had long 
before ceased to be regarded by the learned and the tasteful as 
worth more than merely the poetical element that was in them 
The Jewish nation never were much given to that form of thought 
Perhaps the infancy of no community known to history was freer 
from myths than the early life of the Hebrew people. How im- 
practicable, then, must it have been to generate a myth under 
Herod and Pontius Pilate, in Judaea, just before or soon after the 
destruction of Jerusalem, by people who had been bred Jews and 
were scattered over the Roman Empire ! 

These general remarks, applying to the biography of Jesus in 
the mass, are equally forceful as to any particular passage in his 
history. We must give up the myths. Those who earnestly held 
to them a few years ago are forced by the advancing spirit of 
critical investigation to abandon them. 

As for the theories which involve visions and " significant morn- 
ing dreams," perhaps nothing shorter or better can be said than; 
Lance's sentence : " Decisive ethical conflicts do 

The "dream'' 
not take place in the form of dreams ; " a state- tlieoiT 

ment which will probably be confirmed by the 

consciousness of many a reader. 

Let all dogmas be laid aside and the record of these historians 
be examined to see what they teach any fair-minded reader. 

In general they give ns the knowledge of what Jesus thought 
of a supreme passage in his own mental and spiritual history. 
As no man who existed before his time, or has risen since, has so 
influenced the intellectual and moral condition of the world, this 
piece of autobiography becomes to us a history of unspeakable im- 
portance. We wish to ascertain his views of the subjects involved, 
and compare them with what we believe to be ascertained laws of 
psychology. 

It is first to be noticed that this important and testing occur- 
rence enters his history just at the moment we should naturally 
look for it. He was a man. Marvellous and won- 
derful, in birth and growth, he was a man. From manity ^ Jesus 
perhaps an earlier period than even the beginning 
of conscious self-inspection there had been a sense of spiritual 
idiosyncrasy present with him. It may have been at first the 



yb INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MTNISTEr. 

glimmer, then the dawn, then the growing light. It consisted 
with a perfect human consciousness. The sense of manness, of 
hnmanness, never left him. It was as present to him as it ever 
was to any other human being. His whole history shows that ; 
and from a review of his whole life we must recall that fact in 
the study of his preparation for his life-work. He had an increas- 
ing conviction that he was set in the universe for some unique 
work. He had a growing ability for that work. " He grew in 
wisdom." As he approached the hour in the world's history and 
his own when his mission was to be ostensibly and operatively 
begun, he felt within himself the keen and mastering desire to 
enter upon and accomplish his work. 

The baptism was a crisis. John was to have therein a sign of 

the Messiah, the Sent One, the real Man of Destiny, the Anointed 

Deliverer. If he were that One, — and his belief 

Excitement of mugt have grown ^fo ^ s growth,— what should 

tism occur when he presented himself to John would 

settle the question definitely. It would also be 
his own voluntary dedication to the loftiest and the largest work 
ever enterprised by man. The phenomena at the baptism con- 
spired with his own sentiments to produce in him the most in 
tensely exciting and exalting state of feeling consistent with the 
continuance of life. Through that state he had just passed. It 
was his Rubicon. It was his voluntary devotion to what he never 
could afterward abandon without spiritual shipwreck and self- 
ruin. Every other great soul has passed through precisely in 
kind that crisis of the mind and spirit proportioned to each 
man's soul and work. Jesus is admitted by all healthy minds to 
have been the greatest soul in all our human brotherhood, and the 
work he was about to undertake, whether he should succeed in 
accomplishing it or not, to be the greatest of all the enterprises 
known in the record of holy daring. He was making for himself 
an investiture of himself with the office and dignity of royal rule 
over all humanity. The excitement had been indescribably be- 
cause inconceivably intense. 

Then followed in his what has followed in every other known 
human history, — a collapse, a depression, an awful desolation, a 

,_, plunge from the altitudes of human sensations, 

xne coiicipse. m . m m ■* • • 

perceptions, and spiritual conditions to the depths 

*hat lie separated by thin and weak flooring from the bottomless 



THE TEMPTATION. 97 

pit of despair. Every man that has gone upon a huge work has 
had these alternations, — transitions from the high excitement of 
emprise to the depths of doubts and misgivings, — that dread in- 
terval of chill between commitment to a cause and the first blow, 
— the season, brief by the clock but long by the heart, which the 
soldier passes through between the formation of the line of battle 
and the roar of the first artillery discharge which announces the 
beginning of the action which must then be fought through to the 
result of victory or defeat. 

Such seems to have been the passage of the temptation. Full 
of the Holy Ghost, Jesus returned from Jordan, where he had 
been baptized, and was led by God's Spirit into a 
wilderness, where he was to endure another trial Jesug 
and have shown whether he could as well preserve 
nis unsinningness in depression as in exaltation, when hell mocked 
him as well as when heaven eulogized him. This was absolutely 
necessary for him. It was possible for Jesus to sin : * quite as 
possible as for Adam, or Moses, or you, or me, or any other man. 
Any other view reduces this portion of his history to such a fable 
or parable as would be more ridiculous than an} r farce we ever 
read ; for even in the fable Jesus would be represented as liable 
to a spiritual lapse, which is inconsistent with any dogma of his 
impeccability. He might have attempted an indulgence of him- 
self in what was attractive but sinful. It would have ruined him. 
But if he could not, then he was no man in any reasonable sense 
of that word ; then he had no freedom of will, and could not have 
been even virtuous ; then his history is of no kind of moral sig- 
nificance or spiritual import to any man whatever ; then he was a 
monster, being not God, not angel, not demon, not man, an ano- 
malous drift, floating lawlessly and disorderly among the things 
of God, an entity having no reference to God whatever. This is 
not to be supposed. • 

Jesus was tempted just as any other man, and tells the story of 
his temptation just as any other intelligent person would narrate 
the fearful passage of his supreme spiritual trial. His narrative 

* The old distinction is of the non \ to Adam and to Jesus. Neither had any 
posse peccare and the posse non peccare ; 
the former, the inherent inability to sin, 
belongs to God alone ; the latter, the 
inherent ability to keep from sinning, 

7 



traditional bad blood. That is their 
chief human distinction from other men. 
This is the scholastic view. 



98 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

follows known psychologic laws. " Immediately," he tells us, 

the Spirit which had led him to John, to the part- 

His narrative • j or( } an to tne opening heaven, to the descend- 

given humanly. . . , , ,. . , ,. - . , , . 

mg dove, to the divine benediction, compels him, 
u drives " him into the wilderness " to be tempted of the devil." 
Just so any autobiographer would state it. It was the actual con- 
flict of Jesus with the Power of Evil. 

The excitement of the Jordan scene was followed by a fast of 
forty days and forty nights. We are not prepared to say that 

this was literally a period of forty times twenty- 
, as 5 y four hours. " Forty days " is a Hebraism for an 

days. . 1/ •/ 

indefinitely long time. In the case of Jesus it 
may or may not have been precisely forty days. Without pre- 
tence to miraculous sustentation, one person, in very late years, 
it is affirmed by those who say they kept watch, has strictly fasted. 
If the fast of Jesus was a natural fast, the moral instruction ia 
all the more powerful. 

As in the cases of Moses (Exod. xxxiv. 28) and Elias (1 Kings 
xix. 8), this period was filled with a spiritual ecstasy and a trial 
of his powers which suspended the ordinary wants of the body. 
When at last hunger broke through upon him, and exhaustion 
ensued, Satan is represented as having conie to him presenting 
the tests of his virtue which searched him through all those open- 
ings of the human being as yet discovered on the side of desire, 
namely, the desire of pleasure, the desire of praise, and the desire 
of power, — an approach through the body, through the intellect, 
and through the soul, to the inner man, the spirit, the real I, — or, 
as the writer of the First Epistle General of John (ii. 16) classifies 
them, " the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of 
life." The temptation through fear was reserved. 

In the history of Jesus we shall come upon some other teaching 
in regard to Satan. Here, for the first time in that 
history, this name is assigned to a personal being. 
In advance, there is nothing preposterous, nothing ridicu- 
lous, nothing unreasonable, we may even say nothing improba- 
ble in the supposition that there is an entity 
mgprepos- en( j owec i w ^ n intelligence and moral qualities, 
specially and actively evil ; intelligently and 
persistently evil ; thoroughly and ceaselessly evil. The probabil- 
ities, apart from any special revelation from Almighty God, are 
in favor of the existence of such a person, although it is mani- 



THE TEMPTATION. 99 

festly out of the power of the human reason to determine the 
conditions of his existence or the modes of his action, while pro- 
bable characteristics could be reasonably conjectured. 

Every intelligent man who devotes any time to self -inspection 
finds that his violations of any code, which he believes to be the 
moral law, come either from certain emotions of 
his own inner nature — excited he cannot tell how, n es Jf ne pie8, 

, ' sure on the soul, 
spontaneous so far as he knows — acting upon his 

will, making such a pressure upon that will as amounts to a temp- 
tation ; or, that such excitation of the emotions and such pres- 
sure upon the will is from something without. In the latter case 
it is some perception of some object which he sees, or of some 
sound which he hears, or some report of some of the senses, unde- 
signed^ coming incidentally upon him, or designed, brought to bear 
upon him by some intelligent being. Among the undesigned se- 
ductions to evil, or what may at least be called evil influences, are 
those attractions or repulsions created in the individual man by the 
" spirit of the age," a general air and temperature generated by 
all the intellectual and spiritual motions about him, and coming 
upon his soul not from any individual's design to be specially 
hurtful to him, but just as deleterious air destroys where no man 
is attempting to poison another. 

But we are conscious of sinister and wicked designs upon us 
concocted and operated by wicked men. Some men are adroit, 
some skilful, some surpassingly influential for 
evil. Some of these are really so acute in their 

J sure, 

perceptions, so rapid in their motions, and so per- 
sistent in their efforts, that to speak of them as compassing sea and 
land seems hardly an exaggeration. Artists of the pen sometimes 
paint these far-sighted, near-sighted, telescopic, microscopic, almost 
ubiquitous weavers of the webs of deceit and treachery, and paint 
them with a power that appals us.* The body is at once a help 
and encumbrance to these spirits. We easily reach the proba- 
bility that there are spirits without the clog of flesh who operate 
upon one another, and upon the spirits of men, having learned the 
approaches to the soul through the flesh, some of them having 
probably been in the flesh. As among men there are those who 
gain the mastery, and " get the start," and take the lead in the 

* Perhaps Sue's Le Juif Errant might he cited as furnishing an example. 



Satan of New 



100 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

march " of this majestic world," so among them it is not difficult 
to believe there may be spirits ambitious of chieftainship and 
capable of lifting themselves over the masses to a throne of 
power, and of establishing principalities in spiritual places. 
Whoso could reach the czarship in this rule, or secure and keep 
skill to hold the general's post in this Propaganda, would be The 
Devil, Satanas, Satan. 

These are merely the probabilities reached by reasonings on 

the facts of human nature and society ; but are not proofs of the 

existence of a Personal Spirit of Evil. That is 

Rational proba- p ,-1 *• , ■■%• -» r 

' .,; „ Ji one oi those subiects upon which men can have 

bilities of the ex- . 

jstence of Satan. J1 ° positive knowledge beyond what the Father of 
all spirits should choose to reveal. But if there 
be such a being, the probability is that some revelation of his 
existence would be made, if God ever reveals anything to man. 

The statement that Jesus employed the superstition of his coun- 
trymen to advance his own good and praiseworthy design of ac- 
quiring influence over them for their benefit — a 

very unworthy course for any great man to pur- 
Testament not J . • n • • I . A , , *c 
, . , sue — is especially inappropriate to the case beiore 

us. His narrative of his temptation, together 
with his other teachings, actually made a revelation to the Jewish 
mind. They had no conception of such a being as the Satan of 
the New Testament. 

The statement that the Jews obtained their idea of Satan from 
the East during the " Captivity," is wholly unsustained by any- 
thing known of their literature. Their coneep- 
ewis i ea o ^..^ ^ S a tan was wholly unlike the Persian idea 

Satan not obtained . JjL L ' , .., . . 

in the Captivity. °*- the Prince oi om. lhat old Jslamchsean doc- 
trine traced the existence of evil to one creator, 
as it did the existence of good to another, and these creators were 
equally powerful ; their Satan was always as grand and influen- 
tial a person as their God. No man can read Jewish sacred lite- 
rature without seeing how totally absent is this idea. It seems 
never to have had a place among them. Among the writers of the 
Old Testament the name seldom occurs, and the word not very fre- 
quently. "Where the name is used the person so designated has no 
attribute of grandeur or terribleness or extensive power. He is 
always at the control of Jehovah. This is quite different from the 
doctrine of Ahriman and Ormuzd, the Persian co-ordinate deities 



THE TEMPTATION. 101 

The name occurs first in the book " Job " (i. 6 ; ii. 1-7), in pas- 
sages so familiar that they need not be quoted. But it is worth 
while to remind the reader that in this powerful 
dramatic sketch Satan is not represented with T 
any characteristic of splendor or terror. lie is a 
mischievous vagabond, who is allowed by Almighty God to exert 
his iniinence for evil upon the body and the estate of Job, but 
not upon his soul. He is chained, and the chain is not long. It 
is to be recollected that this book was most probably written 
before the Captivity. 

In the next place, we find the following in Ps. cix. 6 : " Set 
thou a wicked man over him : and let Satan stand at his right 
hand." This, fairly translated, seems to be only a 
statement of God's law of retribution, in which j) avi(i 
the word Satan may be translated " adversary," * 
so that it simply says that when one has behaved wickedly towards 
his friend, " A wicked man shall be set over Jiim^ and an adver- 
sary shall stand at his right hand." But if the word be taken as 
the name of the Chief of Evil, to which there seems to be no ob- 
jection, here is marked inferiority. Satan is limited and subordi- 
nate, a being totally different from the Ahriman of the East and 
the Satan of the New Testament. 

The third citation is in 1 Chron. xxi. 1 : " And Satan stood up 

against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." Supposing 

this to be the personal Devil, the remark in the 

, r. t , -,. , -n The Satan of 

last sentence or the preceding paragraph equally ^ ™ n i i es 

applies. 

The only other passage, so far as I know, in which the word is 

translated " Satan " in our version, is in Zechariah iii. 1 : "And he 

showed me Joshua the high-priest standing before 

the an^el of the Lord, and Satan standing at his „ . . , 
« ' # o Zechanah. 

right hand to resist him." This is a dream or vision. 
As such I admit it may safely be taken as the writer's idea of Satan, 
as even embodying the popular idea. It was written after the Cap- 
tivity. Can any man find in this, and in the text from Chronicles, 
the slightest trace of Persian origin % And this is all, except a few 
passages such as 2 Samuel xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, in which 
the word satan is admittedly properly translated " adversary." 

* I believe the Septuagint generally, I "adversary." 
p charts invariably, translates the word I 



102 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

The Jews, then, did not find their conception of Satan in the 
Captivity. They never adopted the Oriental mythology. Nor 
did Jesus adopt their notions. The Satan of his teaching is a 
revelation, as we shall see as we make progress with this history. 
We shall find that Satan is a person spoken of as thoroughly 
individualized in the mind of Jesus, and subsequently of his fol- 
lowers, and his existence repeatedly referred to, " asserted or im- 
plied as a familiar and important truth." 

Jesus believed himself to have been assailed by Satan, and as 
we know nothing to the contrary, we believe so too. But he no- 
where states, and we have no right to affirm, eer- 
lieved tainly no right to consider it an article of faith, 

that Satan appeared to him in bodily form as 
a man, a " member of the Sanhedrim," or a " Scribe." When a 
cunning evil man discovers a pure and great spirit about to en- 
gage in a great work, he offers resistance and presents obstacles. 
The attractions of the universe bring them face to face, as a neg- 
atively electrified body is drawn towards one that is positively 
electrified. Satan found Jesus as he finds you and me, and he 
instantly opened an attack on his virtue. 

Whether Jesus saw Satan or not, and held this colloquy in ar- 
ticulate words, or had the suggestion presented to him, and from 
his inmost spirit made the response, we cannot 
h l 1C diffi^T know. Eor is it important. The spiritual his- 
ties tory of Jesus comes forward as well on either the- 

ory ; and on either we have all the lessons neces- 
sary for our instruction. The latter is free, however, from the 
embarrassments of the former, as before mentioned, such as the 
bodily visible tempter taking the person of Jesus to the battle- 
ments of the Temple and the top of the mountain. But if Al- 
mighty God gave Satan temporary power to do these things, as 
he is represented in the book " Job " to have done, it need 
give trouble only to such historians as strive to read the history of 
God's world with God totally ignored. The writer of these pages 
believes as much in the existence of God as he does in the exis- 
tence of man. 

The first temptation of Jesus was through the body, by " the 
lust of the flesh." The Tempter said : " If you be the Son of 
God, command that these stones be made bread." It was well put. 
Jesus had just received at Jordan a marvellous confirmation oi 



THE TEMPTATION. 103 

his opinion of himself as the Son of God. If he was the Son 

of God he was the Messiah. If the Messiah, he 

could work miracles. Here was a case where a The first tem P* 
, , , -. T3 . £ ,,. tation: tlie "lust 

miracle seemed needed. Jout it was a temptation f ^ fl , „ 

to place himself out of the harmony of the uni- 
versal order, and to do so for a selfish purpose. He replied in the 
language of the holy books : " It is written, Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God." It was a human and a manly response. Whatever may 
have been his inmost thoughts of himself, whatever profound and 
inscrutable self -consciousness, he always knew himself to be a 
man. He meets the tempter on the platform of common hu- 
manity, and there fights out the battle of virtue. The passage he 
quotes in reply is from Deuteronomy viii. 3, and occurs in the his- 
tory of the temptation of the people of Israel, in which tempta- 
tion they fell, even as Adam fell when he was tempted. It im- 
plies, not that men are to put aside the ordinary food of the body, 
but that when a man is in the discharge of duty he may depend 
upon God's providential arrangements. " Word " does not occur 
in the original. It is " every — [thing] — that proceedeth from 
God's mouth," every expression of His will. Even when men 
eat " bread," they do not live by bread alone. There is a vitality 
maintained by the Father of spirits in men which makes the 
bread productive of growth or reparative of decay. 

Jesus might have yielded to the temptation. Then had he 
parted with his Messiahship, his ordination to the leadership of 
those striving to be bravely good. He would no longer have been 
a Deliverer. He would himself have been a captive of his lusts. 

The second temptation * addressed the spirit of Jesus through 
the intellect, " the lust of the eye." Jesus was present bodily or 
by vivid mental representation, it matters not 
which, in Jerusalem, and " on the pinnacle of . Sec ^ d tem P ta " 
the temple " The precise spot is of course not ^ " „ 
ascertainable, but a probable suggestion"]* is that 
Jesus was placed on the lofty porch which overhung the valley 
of the Kedron, where the steep side of the valley was added to 
the height of the temple-wall, as described by Josephus,^ and 



* It will be perceived that I follow 
tlie order of Luke rather than of Mat- 
thew, as being more logical. 



f Smith's N. T. Hist, 
%Ant.i*Y. 11, §5. 



104 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

made a depth down which it was terrific to gaze. Then the 
tempter said, " Cast thyself down." He followed up the sug- 
gestion by an abbreviated but verbatim quotation from the sacred 
book, namely the 91st Psalm : " It is written, lie shall give His 
angels charge over thee, to keep thee ; and in their hands they 
shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." An 
assurance given to the children of the Almighty God in general 
must a fortiori apply to the Son of God, one who had been pro- 
nounced so by a voice out of the heavens. " Eow, then," said 
the tempter, " perform a brilliant miracle. Fling thyself from 
this height, and when thou touchest the ground the people will 
flock to thee, and without question hail thee as the Messiah." It 
addressed itself principally to the imagination of Jesus. It was 
one form of miracle which the Messiah, such as the Jews looked 
for, was traditionally expected to perform. Jesus replied, " It is 
written again, * Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." f To 
obey the seductive suggestion would have been so grateful to a 
selfish vanity. But he repels it. The Divine Providence must 
never be invoked for selfish ends. 

The third form of temptation assailed Jesus through the pas- 
sions, — " the pride of life," ambition, " the last infirmity of noble 
minds." Satan made to pass before the mind of 

Third tempta- j esus a panorama of the kingdoms of the world, 
of life " their power and their glory. He professed to be 

owner and master of these. He tendered them 
to Jesus on the solitary condition that Jesus should pay him 
homage. As if he had said : You came to be the Messiah. You 
can accomplish your message better by a partnership with me. 
You can at once go to the head of the world. You are the Son 
of God : join me : acknowledge my world-sovereignty, and then 
I will remove all obstructions from your path to supreme power 
and glory ! It was a proposition to use physical force for the 
accomplishment of moral results — to turn from the path of suffer- 
ing and labor and martyrdom for the truth. It was the State 
proposing an alliance with the Church, for the accomplishment 
of a good end by sinister means. But it involved homage to Evil, 
tribute t ^ the Chief of Evil. 

Whatever may be said of the other temptations, this must be 

* The word nafov, translated "again," I rather "in another place." 
does not signify "on the contrary," but I f Deut. vi. 16. 



THE TEMPTATION. 105 

admitted to have been internal. The physical conditions of the 
planet are such that there cannot possibly be an elevation from 
which all the kingdoms of the world could be seen, and there is 
no conceivable position in which their "power" and "glory" 
could have been visible. 

It is to be observed that this temptation assailed Jesus on the 
Messiah side of his nature and expectations. He now, if never 
before, believed himself to be the Messiah. He 
was about to exhibit himself as such to his nation. Assa ^t on the 
The people of the Jews, as he knew, held that Jesug 
the Messiah upon his arrival should first break 
the Roman yoke, and then, by a series of conquests, military and 
moral, reduce all the nations to the rule of the Jews and to the 
religion of Judaism. Why should not Jesus satisfy this natural 
expectation ? Why not abandon the method of leavening the 
world by the sure but very slow process of the operation of truth, 
and transmute it at once by a single stroke of divine power, such 
as he could have exercised if he were the Son of God % The very 
attempt would have been homage to Satan, a bending of the knee 
to Evil. He was willing for this wonderfully endowed young man 
to exercise all the authority and enjoy all the glory of the most 
splendid viceroyalty of the world, while he retained supreme 
dominion. 

The reply of Jesus is : " Get thee hence, Satan, for it is writ- 
ten, Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy God, and him only 
shalt thou worship." The answer shows that Jesus now certainly 
recognized the instigator of his evil thoughts. The suggestion 
of idolatry of a very foul kind, the worship of the Spirit of Evil, 
unveils the Satanic character of the tempter, and Jesus repels 
him. 

There is an expression in Luke (iv. 6) worth notice. Satan 
says : " All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them ; 
for that is delivered to me, and to whomsoever I 
will I give it." That to which special attention 
is called is the acknowledgment of his inferiority by the Chief 
of Evil Spirits, amid intense braggadocio. He had not this 
dominion of personal natural right, but had been permitted to 
enter upon it. The whole statement is a falsehood, when asserted 
by the Evil One ; but the subservience and limit which he admits 
is a characteristic of the Satan of whom Jesus speaks, which dis- 



106 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

tinguishes him from the Ahriman of the Magian mythology, 

from which Jesus and the Jews are said to have derived their 

notion of Satan, and is very important in this beginning of our 

examination of what Jesus teaches as to the Chief of Evil. 

Another general remark must be made. It is observable that 

Jesus never attempts to rebut temptation with logic. He has no 

argument with Satan. He confronts him with 
Jesus repels with ^ Word of Qq± He , ^ ^ d books Qf 

Scripture. 1 

his people. This homage paid to the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures by a mind endowed naturally with greater gifts 
than that of Moses, or David, or any of the prophets, or any other 
human being, gives those books an exalted and enduring impor- 
tance. 

The history tells us that when the tempter departed angels 

" came and ministered " to Jesus. We have seen the statement 

of the announcement of his birth by angels, both 

ls before and after it occurred. Their immediate 

attendance upon Jesus brings them nearer to this 

biography, and as this portion is taken to be autobiographic, it is 

the first mention made by Jesus of these superior beings. It is 

the proper place to institute an inquiry into the position which they 

held in Jewish literature and thought before the birth of Jesus, 

as preparatory to what he himself teaches upon the subject. 

It is to be noticed how little is given in the Old Testament 
writings to gratify the curiosity of man. Of that with which he is 
supposed to have immediate and great concern there is much 
stated. The heavenly world, the residence of good spirits, is fre- 
quently spoken of, and many things told of its inhabitants, not as 
doctrines of religion but as facts. 

They are regarded as the highest order of created intelligences, 

all other creatures being below them in dignity and station. The 

prophet Isaiah says : " In the year that king 

Angels the high- J T \ , ,. , T * 7 , T - , J .. & 

est of creatures Uzzian died I saw also Jehovah sitting upon a 

throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the 

Temple. Above it stood the seraphim : each one had six wings. 

And one cried to another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah 

of hosts ! the whole earth is full of his glory ! " This nearness to 

the central throne of the universe is set forth also in Ezekiel, and 

Daniel. The former says (x. 1) : " Then I looked, and, behold. 



THE TEMPTATION. 107 

in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubim, there 

appeared over them as it were a sapphire-stone, as the appearance 

of the likeness of a throne." Also (in xxviii. 14) : " Thon art the 

anointed chernb that covereth ; and I have set thee so : thon wast 

upon the holy mountain of God ; thou hast walked up and down 

in midst of the stones of fire." In Daniel x. 13, the angel Michael 

is called " one of the chief princes ; " and in xii. 1, " the great 

prince." In 2 Chron. xviii. 18, it is written: "Again he said, 

Therefore hear the word of the Lord : I saw the Lord sitting upon 

His throne, and all the host of heaven standing on His right hand 

and on His left." In 2 Kings xix. 15, Jehovah is represented as 

dwelling among the cherubim. 

They are represented as powerful creatures. In Psalm ciii. 20, 

David exclaims : " Bless the Lord, ye angels that excel in 

strength." Evidence of their strength is sup- 

? , i ■ . ,, , , ,P , . ' They are pow- 

posed to be given m the statements that m three erful creatures 

days an angel, as an agent of God, destroyed 
seventy thousand persons out of Israel and Judah (2 Sam. xxiv.) ; 
and that in one night an angel destroyed the army of Sennache- 
rib, numbering one hundred and eighty-five thousand men (2 Kings 
xix.). But in the latter case certainly the " Angel of Jehovah " 
is meant, and of him we shall find more hereafter. 

Their activity is set forth in such expressions as (Ps. civ. 4) 
" Who maketh His angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.' 

Many things are ascribed to cherubim and sera- „, 

J & , _ They are active. 

phim. In the ninth chapter of Daniel we are 
told that during the time it required to utter a prayer the angel 
Gabriel came to him from the supreme heaven. Dr. D wight 
says (System of Theology, vol. i.) : " This is a rapidity exceeding 
all the comprehension of the most active imagination ; surpass- 
ing the amazing swiftness of light." 

Their intelligence was set forth in the ascription to them of 
" eyes," and, as in Ezekiel, of the " face of man," the usual orien- 
tal svmbol of intelligence. The name " cherub " m , . . , „. 

° Their intelligence. 

means " fulness of knowledge." In the speech 
of Mephibosheth to David the wisdom of the angels is implied : 
" But my lord the king is as an angel of God : do therefore what 
is good in thine eyes." (2 Sam. xix. 27.) 

In every mention of them, or allusion to them, their holiness 
seems to be implied, as in Daniel iv. 13, 23 ; viii. 13 ; and Genesis 



108 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

xxvij 12. More than in any precise statement does the air of 
The" h li « ^^ tn0lI g nt pervade all the Jewish holy books, 
written by men diversely educated and living far 
apart. 

Their numbers are described as immense. In Genesis xxxii. 2, 
Jacob is said to have called the place Mahanaim, signifying 

Their numbers " two nosts or camps," for when he met the an- 
gels of God he said, " This is Jehovah's host," 
The same idea is in 1 Chron. xii. 22 : " For at that time, day by 
day, they came unto David to help him, until it was a great he it, 
like the host of God. 5 ' The Supreme Beiug is repeatedly called 
"Jehovah, God of Hosts." David, in Psalm lxviii., exclaims : 
" The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of 
angels." 

But whatever spirituality, intelligence, power, activity, and 

holiness are ascribed to them, there is always implied an infinite 

distance between them and Jehovah. The well- 
Infinitely below . T ■ . . 
God known passage m Job iv. 18, is very emphatic : 

" His angels he charged with folly." " We some- 
times find angels, in their terrene manifestations, eating and 
drinking (Gen. xviii. 8 ; xix. 3) ; but in Judg. xiii. 15, 16, the 
angel who appeared to Manoah declined, in a very pointed man- 
ner, to accept his hospitality. The manner in which the Jews ob- 
viated the apparent discrepancy, and the sense in which they un- 
derstood such passages, appear from the apocryphal book of Tobit 
(xii. 19), where the angel is made to say: 'It seems to you, in- 
deed, as though 1 did eat and drink with you ; but I use invisible 
food which no man can see.' This intimates that they were sup- 
posed to simulate when they appeared to partake of man's food, 
but that yet they had food of their own proper to their natures. 
Milton, who was deeply read in the ' angelic ' literature, derides 
these questions {Par. Zost, v. 433-439). But if angels do not 
need food ; if their spiritual bodies are inherently incapable of 
waste or death, it seems not likely that they gratuitously perform 
an act designed, in all its known relations, to promote growth, to 
repair waste, and to sustain existence." (See McClintc ck and 
Strong's Oyc.y in loco.) 

There are only dim suggestions of their employment in heaven 
(as in 1 Kings xxii. 19 ; Isa. vi. 1-3 ; Dan. vii. 9, 10), intimating 
most profound worship and adoration. But they are everywhere 



THE TEMPTATION. 109 

spoken of as the agents of God's providence when he discharges 
the functions of Supreme Moral Governor in 
punishing the wicked and directing the good and 
sustaining the despondent ; as when they destroyed the first-born 
of Egypt (Exod. xii. 23), guided Abraham's servant (Gen. xxiv. 
7, 40), and cheered Jacob at Bethel (Gen. xxviii. 12). In the 
earlier history, the intercourse of the angels with men, repeatedly 
hallowing familiar domestic life, is destitute of awfulness. This 
is illustrated by the story told in Genesis xviii. For a season they 
are not so frequently mentioned ; but in the times of the Judges, 
when the people were deprived of prophetic guidance, and in the 
time of the Captivity, when they were especially exposed to the 
influences of heathenism, these angelic visitations reappear, and 
seem to have constituted God's special agency for communicating 
with His chosen people. They then inspired awe. More and 
more that feeling deepened. With Abraham's dignified and nat- 
ural entertainment of the angels, as so graphically given in Gen- 
esis xviii., contrast Gideon's apprehension (Judges vi. 22), and the 
fright of the sons of Oman (1 Chron. xxi. 20), and David's fear 
(1 Chron. xxi. 30), and the quaking and flight of Daniel's friends 
(Dan. x. 7), and Daniel's own speechlessness and swooning (Dan. 
x. 8, 15, 17). This sentiment, as we shall see, prevailed in the 
popular mind in the times of Jesus, and always prevails in times 
of materialistic tendencies and among peoples made gross by de- 
votion to mere animal results. 

In this connection there is a presentation in the Old Testament 
writings which has of late years attracted great attention. Among 
the angelic revelations we find the phrases, Tjxta 
t-n"bx, Malak Elohim, and tf-rv* Sjaba, Malah Ye- j ehovah ° 
hovah — the Angel of God, and the Angel of Jeho- 
vah — repeatedly occurring, especially the latter. Whatsoever or 
whosoever may be meant by this, it is certainly a personage 
very different from others who are ordinarily called angels. For 
no dogmatic purpose, but simply to show what views were held 
among learned and unlearned Jews when Jesus appeared, we pro- 
pose to present a condensed history of this word, for which Ave 
shall be largely indebted to Hengstenberg's Christology. 

In Genesis xvi. 7-13, the Angel of Jehovah is said to have 
found Plagar, and a prerogative of the Supreme Creator is as- 
cribed to him, namely, the vast increase of her posterity. Hagai 



110 INTKODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

recognized him as God, and expressed surprise that she had 

seen God and lived. In the account already 
Instances in Gen- ref erred to? in Genesis xviii., one of Abraham's 

three guests, distinguished by the dignity of his 
person, announces himself as the Angel of Jehovah. In Genesis 
xxii. Abraham receives a command from God (Elohim is the word 
here) to offer up his son. In the act of obedience he is stopped by 
Malak Jehovah, the Angel of Jehovah, who says : " Now I know 
that thou f earest God, since thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only 
son from me? Abraham called the place Jehovah-jireh, " Jehovah 
will provide," which shows that he believed that he had seen Jehovah. 
In Exodus iii. the Angel of Jehovah appears to Moses in the 
flaming bush, and ascribes to himself all the attributes of the 

true God. Moses covers his face, being afraid to 
dus look upcn God. In Exodus xxxii. the Angel of 

Jehovah refuses to be any more the guide of the 

people Israel, after their sin in worshipping the golden calf. He 

afterwards relents. 

In Judges ii. the Angel of Jehovah appears to the Israelites in 

a place which is afterwards called Bochim, and makes himself 

T T , known as their deliverer from Egypt. In chap- 

in Judges. m 0t/ L r 

ter vi. he appears to Gideon, and in verse 14 he 
is called unqualifiedly Jehovah. In verse 22 Gideon expresses a 
fear lest he might die, having seen the Angel of Jehovah. Be- 
ing pacified by the august Being, he erects an altar which he 
calls " Jehovah-shalom," Jehovah! 8 Peace. In chapter xiii. is 
the interesting story of Manoah. When the -wonder- working vis- 
itor disappeared in the name, " then Manoah was convinced that 
he was the Angel of Jehovah; " and in ver. 22 he says to his wife i 
" We shall surely die, because we have seen God? 

In 2 Kings xix. the Angel of Jehovah destroyed the Assy- 
T T .. rian host, which threatened destruction to the 

In Kings. ' 

theocracy. % 

In Isaiah lxiii. 9, the Angel of Jehovah is called " the angel of 

T T . , His presence," that is, the angel of His face. 

In Isaiah. i \ ' ' ■ _ to 

In Zechariah "Malak Tehovah" is very fre- 
quently mentioned. The prophet receives all his revelations from 

T , . , this wonderful Being. In chapter ii. (12-15) he 
in zjecnaiian. ■ 

is distinguished from Jehovah of Hosts, by whom 
he represents himself as sent. Yet the prophet seems to give him the 



THE TEMPTATION. 



Ill 



In the Psalms. 



name of Jehovah of Hosts in chapter vi. 15. The 8th verse of chap- 
ter xi i. is remarkable. There Malah Yehovah, the Angel of Jehovah, 
is spoken of as being equal in dignity and glory with Elohim, God. 

Compare Psalm xxxiv. 7 with Psalm xxxv. 5, where the protec- 
tion of the good and the punishment of the wick- 
ed are ascribed to the Angel of Jehovah, an ad- 
ministration of moral government which is elsewmere ascribed to 
Jehovah himself.* 

These remarkable passages show that while the Jews held the 
doctrine that there was one uncreated Supreme Being, God, Jeho- 
vah, Elohim, Uncreated One, Creator, they believed that there 
was One who was the Revealer of the Jehovah, Head of the World, 
Kuler of the Princes of the Angels, Metratron, Mediator. That 
they could not have borrowed the remarkable idea from the Per- 
sians is apparent from the fact that it pervades all their books re- 
garded as sacred, those written before as well as those written 
after they had been submitted to the influence of Orientalism.-)* 

To Jesus, w r hen he fainted in his bodily collapse after his fast, 
and his mental exhaustion after the severe spiritual conflicts 
through which he passed in his temptation, there 
came angels, ministering to him what he needed, 



— whatever w T as necessary to refresh him in body 
and in soul — food, and tenderness, and sympathy. 



They minister 
to Jesus. 



* It must he noticed that in all the 
passages cited above the original is re- 
ferred to, and not the English version, 
which, however, is ordinarily quite close 
enough for all practical purposes. 

f Hengstenberg uses the facts in this 
case to show that this angel of Jeho- 
vah was Christ, a Being equal in dignity 
and glory with the great God. 

A remarkable little book by Prof. 
MacWhorter, of Yale College, is enti- 
tled " Yahveh Christ ; or, The Memorial 
Name." It holds (1), That the name is 
not Jehovah, signifying I AM, but Yah- 
veh, The One to Come, equivalent to 
the Greek 6 Epxo/nevos, Ho Erkomenos, 
The One Coming, the difference being 
in the vowels, the Jewish prejudice mak- 
ing the former reading, while the latter is 
aorrect. (2), That the right reading is, 



" The Angel Jehovah," not " The Angel 
of Jehovah," the latter word being appo- 
sitional ; and that this Memorial Name 
is complete in Christ. 

Readers who wish to examine thia 
subject more thoroughly are referred 
to Christohgy of Old Testament, by 
Hengstenberg, vol. i., chapter 3, in 
which he will find a very able and 
learned treatise on the Metratron, with 
an interesting comparison of Jewish and 
Persian teaching on these questions ; 
also, Prof. MacWborter's book ju«t 
mentioned ; and Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. 
for 1859, p. 805, an article on " The 
Angel of Jehovah ; " also, Bib. Saa. , 
Jan. , 1857, p 98. These we have used 
only so far as they bore upon the object 
we have in view in this biography of 
Jesus. 



CHAPTER LY. 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 



In the mean time the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem hearing of John's 

proceedings sent a deputation of priests and Levites to catechise 

him as to the office which he supposed himself to 

xv J*"^ ^ ■ he filling. The first question, as history stands in 

the Sanhedrim. to ^ ' J 

the first chapter of John, was general, " Who are 
you ? " But he kuew the Messianic expectancy, and promptly and 
frankly said, " I am not the Messiah, the Christ, the ordained 
One." They held the tradition that the Messiah was to he pre- 
ceded hy a powerful prophet, endowed as Elijah was — perhaps 
by Elijah himself. This was the usual interpretation of Malachi 
iv. 5. So they asked John if he was Elijah. He asserted that 
he was not Elijah, nor the prophet whose coming had been pre- 
dicted by Moses in Deuteronomy xviii. 15, a prediction which the 
Jews interpreted to signify the resurrection of Jeremiah, or some 
other ancient prophet, who was not the Messiah, as appears from 
Matt. xvi. 14. 

The whole passage from John i. 10-28, has already been given 
at p. 77. The interview with the committee of the Sanhedrim 

appears to have taken place as the terrible trial of 

John's testimony T ,-, .-, n -\ - •< 1 

. T -r , ■ Jesus m the wilderness was reaching its conclu- 

to Jesus. John l. . « 

sion. We learn from John 1. 29, that " the next 
day John saw Jesus coming unto him, and said, £ Behold the 
Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world ! This is 
he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred 
before me ; for he was before me. And I knew him not : but 
.hat he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come 
baptizing with water.' And John bare record, saying, ' 1 saw the 
Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon 
him. And I knew him not : but he that sent me to baptize with 
water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the 
Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which 



THE FIRST DJSCIPLE8. 113 

baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that 
this is the Son of God.' " 

This is substantially the testimony of John the Baptist : " Yon- 
der is the Man who is c Ho Erkomenos,' the i Coming One,' of 
whom 1 spoke yesterday. I did not myself at first recognize 
him, but He who commissioned me to baptize gave me a token 
whereby I should be able to recognize Jehovah's Anointed, and 1 
do declare that those signs were displayed at his baptism, and I 
now discharge the other function of my office by announcing him 
the very Messiah ! " Why Jesus afforded John the opportunity 
to bear this testimony we cannot tell. If the temptation took 
place on the Quarantania, according to tradition, then Jesus must 
have gone a little out of his way to have another interview with 
the Baptist. If the mountains of Moab were the scene, then, 
on his homeward journey, Jesus would pass near the place where 
John was baptizing. 

But John's speech, whatever may have been its general effect 

upon the minds of his scholars, does not seem to have penetrated 

any one in a special manner. The next day Je- 

t,t T1 .j , , p "The Lamb of 

sus again was seen, and tnen John said to two 01 c d „ 

his disciples who were standing near, " Behold 
the Lamb of God ! " Something in the manner of their teacher 
arrested their attention. They certainly could not have formed 
any very distinct theologic or metaphysical idea from this descrip- 
tion. It may be doubted whether the Baptist himself knew what 
his words meant. They were an utterance of the heart, in an 
ecstatic moment, springing past the intellect into speech. . John 
probably did not attach to them the idea of vicarious suffering, 
which is a Christian thought ; and John probably had only Judaic 
ideas. 

But whatever may have been their meaning, the two disci- 
ples who heard John's words followed Jesus as he walked. He 
turned and saw them, and spoke graciously to 
them. " "What do you seek ? " As if he had said, w0 lscip e 
"Do you wish to ask anything of me?" They called him 
"Rabbi," giving him the Hebrew designation of teacher, ac- 
knowledging him to be their superior. They inquired his place 
of lodging, doubtless that they might have a private interview, 
which, if satisfactory, would lead them to attach themselves to 
him permanently. Jesus invited them to accompany him, which 
8 



114: 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



they did, and spent the remainder of the day with him, it being 
about four o'clock in the afternoon when they began the conver- 
sation. (See John i. 39.) 

These two men were Andrew of Bethsaida and John the Evan- 
gelist. The latter is not positively named in the narrative, but a 
Andrew and J h comparison of statements in John's gospel makes 
it quite plain who is meant.* Of the former we 
do not know Yery much, except that he always seemed to have 
a high place among the apostles of Jesus. His brother Simon 
was a more marked character, as we shall see. There are various 
traditions concerning Andrew. Eusebius says that he preached in 
Scythia; Jerome and Theodoret, that his ministry was in Achaia; 
ISTieephorus, that it was in Asia Minor and Thrace. He is said 
to have been crucified in Patrse, in Achaia, on a cross decus- 
sate (X), hence called St. Andrew's Cross. An apocryphal 
book called " Acts of Andrew " is mentioned by some ancient 
writers. 

Andrew and John sitting with Jesus make a group worth paus- 
ing to contemplate. Whatever may have been the design of this 
marvellously endowed young teacher, this is the beginning of a 
ministry which is to spiritualize the philosophies of the world. 
This was a society composed of earnest seekers after the true and 
the holy, with a true and holy teacher. From this hut on the 
Jordan went forth a conquering power beside whose achieve- 
ments the deeds of the Alexanders and Csesars and Napoleons 
grow pale and insignificant. 

A third disciple was almost immediately added to this company, 
namely, Simon, Andrew's brother. When Andrew left Jesus he 
found his brother, and so powerfully had the pri- 
wards called Pe- Ta ^ e discourse of Jesus impressed him that he 
ter. did not hesitate to declare to him, "We have 

found the Messiah ! " Simon was not naturally 
disposed to be a sceptic. His temperament was ardent. He had 
probably been a disciple of John, and was one of the devout Jews 
who were earnestly looking for the Lord's Christ, the Anointed 



* Alford's reasons are (a), That the 
Evangelist never names himself in his 
gospel ; (b), That this account is so mi- 
nute (mentioning specifications) that it 
must have been made by an eye-witness; 



and (c), That the other disciple certainly 
would have been named if the write* 
had not had some special reason for sup- 
pressing the name. 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 115 

of Jehovah, the great Deliverer, — looking no doubt not very spir 
itually, rather with eyes full of Jewish prejudice, and hoping for 
material splendors and conquests, nevertheless looking and ex- 
pecting, and deeply stirred by the ministry of the Baptist. As 
soon as he came into the presence of Jesus, and received the 
searching glance of the new Master, he was saluted by name. 
" Your name is Simon. It shall be Cephas." The latter is 
Syro-Chaldee, signifying Rock, and is equivalent to the Greek 
name Peter, by which the Apostle was afterward commonly known. 

The next day Jesus started for his home in Galilee, and met 
Philip, whom he invited to add himself to the companionhood of 
those whom he was gathering about him to be his phili 

confidential friends, and the nucleus of that dis- 
ciplehood which he intended to make the depository and agency 
of his teaching and influence. Philip was of Bethsaida, the city 
of Andrew and Peter, and appears to have been of the number 
of Galilsean peasants whom John's preaching had attracted. 
There seems to have been a previous friendship between him and 
the sons of Jonas and of Zebedee, and this band of young men may 
have been in devout fellowship and looking for the Messiah. Jesus 
probably had seen him before, if " finding " here implies seeking. 

It is quite natural to suppose that the open eye of Jesus took in 
the men whom he met from time to time at feasts or usual social 
gatherings, and marked those whose characteristics struck him as 
favorable. Philip was affectionate, simple-hearted, and childlike. 
We shall see these characteristics as the history advances. He is 
usually named at the head of the second four, as Peter is of the 
first four, disciples ; and when the Apostles were selected he was 
one. From Acts i. 13 we learn that he was with the company of 
disciples after the Ascension, and on the day of Pentecost. All 
other trace of him is somewhat uncertain. Clement of Alexan- 
dria says that he had a wife and children ; and he is accounted 
among the martyrs. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, speaks of 
him as having " fallen asleep " in the Phrygian Hierapolis. (Euseb., 
H. E., iii. 31.) A certain apocryphal book, entitled "Acta Philippi," 
contains many monstrous and foolish things attributed to Philip. 

Philip accepted the invitation, and was as much convinced of 
the Messiahship of Jesus as the other disciples. 
In his turn he went out and found Nathan ael, 
and told him, saying, "We have found him of whom Moses in 



116 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



the law and the prophets did write,* Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
of Joseph." This address seems to imply that these two men had 
had previous conversation about the Expected One. All this cir- 
cle of acquaintances appears to have been on the look-out. In his 
jo j at the discovery he goes with child-like gnshingness to com- 
municate the good news to his friend. His allusion to Moses was 
probably made with the passage in Deuteronomy xviii. 18 in his 
mind. His calling Jesus the son of Joseph proves only that Jo- 
seph was commonly reputed to be his father, as we naturally sup- 
pose would be the case, even amid the circumstances which these 
historians say surrounded his birth. It does not prove that Jo- 
seph was his father. 

To the enthusiastic announcement by Philip, Nathanael re- 
plied : " Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " 
Nathanael was a G-alilsean: it cannot be supposed that he intended 
to throw reproach upon his own province in general, nor upon 
Nazareth in particular. His question means simply what it seems 
to mean, namely, that Nazareth was so insignificant a place that 
it was not reasonable to expect the Messiah to spring therefrom. 
It is a remarkable fact that neither in the books of the Old Tes- 
tament nor in Josephus is any mention made of Nazareth ; of so 
little historical importance was this place. 

Philip's reply is, like most simple utterances of guileless souls, 
wonderfully philosophical : " Come and see." Spiritual discov- 
eries, as all thinkers know, are exceedingly difficult to report. 
Each one must for himself pass through the processes of thought 
and emotion which are necessary for spiritual growth. No man 
can, upon the representation of another, believe in the adapted 
ness of any spirit to his own spirit. He must try it for himself. 
In nothing do we need to be more practical and to exercise more 
common sense than in the affairs of religion. 

Nathanael readily went. As he approached, Jesus said to the 
bystanders, " Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile ! " 
These are plain words that need no explanation. Nathanael 



* Reference is made to Ps. ii. 6-9 ; 
Isa. ix. 6; xi. 1-5, 10; liii. 2-12; Jer. 
xxiii. 5, 6 ; xxxiii. 15 ; Ezekiel xxxiv. 
23 ; Dan. ix. 25 ; Mic. v. 2 ; Hag. ii. 7 ; 
Zechariah iii. 8 ; ix. 9 ; xiii. 7 ; Mai. 
iii. 1 ; iv. 2. Readers who examine 



these passages critically may differ in 
their estimates of their Messianic val- 
ue, bnt can hardly fail to find in them 
sufficient basis for the expectations of 
these men and the Jewish people gen- 
erally. 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 117 

seems to have overheard this speech, and, without presuming to 
appropriate to himself the fine quality mentioned, saw that the 
remark naturally intimated a previous knowledge. lie frankly 
asked Jesus: "Whence did you know me ?" And Jesus replied : 
" Before Philip saw you, when you were under the fig-tree, I saw 
you." Nathanael exclaimed : " Rabbi, you are the Son of God ! 
You are the Kin £ of Israel ! " 

This sudden admission on Kathanael's part, of the claim of 
Messiahship made for Jesus by Philip, seems a little strange. 
What Jesus said — if we have it all recorded here — amounts to 
very little. He might easily have seen him sitting in meditation 
under his fig-tree. There must have been something more implied 
in look or tone, or both, that went directly to Nathan ael's heart. 
He was somehow searched. There came into his soul a feeling 
of the presence of a superior spirit. By word or deed Jesus 
made him feel that he knew what was in Nathanael's mind when 
he sat under the fig-tree. The sight of his person was no proof 
of divine or even extraordinary power. 

The reply of Jesus is remarkable : " Because I said unto you 
that I saw you under the fig-tree, do you believe % You shall 
see greater things than these." And to the company present he 
added : " Verily, verily,* I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see 
heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending 
upon the Son of Man." So far as we know, this was never liter- 
ally fulfilled to those to whom it was spoken. It has been sug- 
gested that the disciples frequently saw around Jesus, as he talked, 
or prayed, or wrought, or slept, appearances of angelic creatures. 
But this is mere conjecture. They never said so. It is poetry 
and not history. The words, then, must have been symbolic : if 
literal, the fulfilment would most surely have been recorded. The}: 
do symbolize that series of wonderful deeds wherewith afterwards 
his life became adorned and made the most marvellous of human 
histories ; and that spiritualizing of human modes of thought by 
Jesus, in which heaven has been opened ; and that more active flux 
And reflux of celestial powers which have marked the Christian era 

But now for the first time Jesus applies to himself that name 
which seems to have been his favorite mode of self-designation, 
u The Son of Man." Others spoke of him usually by the name 



* This afit'iv, auyv, translated " ver- I similar asseverations the other biogra- 
ily, verily," is peculiar to John. In ! phers use a^v only once. 



118 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



which Nathanael had employed — " Son of God." In Nathasael'a 
case we must suppose the speaker to have had little 
„ e ° conception of the meaning of the phrase. Philip 

had probably told him that John had called Jesus 
" Son of God," and it was to his mind significant vaguely of 
something very great and glorious, but how great and how glorious 
he knew not, taking it for granted^ however, that it included all 
Messianic functions and magnificence. But Jesus almost invari- 
ably * calls himself " The Son of Man," a name never through 
his whole life applied to him by any other person, f 

It is to be noticed that in the original the article is very rarely 
omitted 4 He styles himself, with obvious intention to make 
the name personally distinguishing, " the Son of Man." It was a 
title not common among the Jews, and not understood by them 
when Jesus employed it and applied it to himself. 

The phrase occurs in the Old Testament, where it appears to 
have had its origin. It is in Daniel vii. 13, where it has been 
noticed that the word is not Ben-ish or Ben- Adam, but Bar-Enosh, 
which represents humanity in its greatest frailty and humility. 
Ezekiel is repeatedly called Son of Man, but never calls himself 
so. It may have been to keep him from undue exaltation on 
account of his many great and glorious visions. But he is not 
called the Son of Man. The Old Testament writers may be said 
to have used the phrase to designate, generally, humanity in its 
highest ideal. It was certainly not a customary designation of 
the Messiah, else some false Messiah would have used it. More- 
over, the people would sometimes at least have applied it to 
Jesus, as they frequently did the name " Son of David," which 
latter name Jesus accepted, and upon which he was accustomed 
to base an argument for the superior dignity of the Messiah. 
(See Matt. ix. 27 ; xii. 23 ; xv. 22 ; xx. 30, 31 ; xxi. 9, 15 ; xxii. 
42, 45.) 

It was as the " Son of David " that the people implored his 



* In John's ' ' Gospel," however, Jesus 
is frequently represented as calling him- 
self the " Son of God," with a pregnant 
meaning. 

f In Acts vii. 56 it occurs, and has 
special reference to the bodily appear- 
ance of Jesus, as it seemed to the eyes 



of dying Stephen. See also Rev. i. 
13. 

% I now discover only one passage in 
which it is omitted, namely, John v. 27, 
perhaps for a reason we may present 
when we reach the discussion of the 



THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 119 

help, and as the " Son of David " he did help them. The prophets 
had foretold that the Messiah was to come of 
David's line, and frequently used the name of D ., „ 
David to imply the Messiah. The Jews cher- 
ished the name and fame of David as their most glorious mon- 
arch, the king who had done most to extend their dominions. 
And so they naturally came to associate ideas of secular splendor 
and conquest with the thought of the Messiah. 

Perhaps it was on this account that Jesus, when he wished to 
connect his person with the Messianic idea, preferred to call him- 
self " The Son of Man." It lifted him from the sphere of secu- 
lar to that of spiritual and everlasting life ; it enlarged him from 
the representative of one family — a royal family — to the repre- 
sentative of all humanity. It realized Messiah, it idealized man. 
And the mission of Jesus was to break bands — bands of church- 
ism, bands of monarchy, bands of caste, prejudice, conventional- 
ities. In his work he was to bring himself down to all the 
weaknesses, wants, and sympathies of man : in the results of that 
work he was to lift man up to himself. 

In regard to Nathanael, it may be further stated that he is 
believed by many to be the same as Bartholomew. The reason 
assigned is, that in the first three gospels Nathan- 
ael is not mentioned, while Philip and Bartholo- 
mew are constantly named together ; whereas in John, Philip and 
JVathanael are constantly coupled, but Bartholomew is never 
mentioned. We may consider his real name as Nathanael, while 
Bartholomew, which signifies " Son of Tolmai," is his surname. 
We learn from John xxi. 2, that he was a native of Cana, in 
Galilee. Bernard and Abbot Rupert were of opinion that he 
was the bridegroom at the marriage in Cana. He is reported 
amono; the witnesses of the resurrection and of the ascension of 
Jesus, and as returning to Jerusalem with the other Apostles. 
(See John xxi. 2, and Acts iv. 12, 13.) 

The apocryphal statements are, that he was subsequently an 
Apostle to the Indians, whoever they may have been, the ancient 
writers using the word indefinitely. The place of his death is 
not well ascertained. Albanopolis, in Armenia Minor, and 
Urbanopolis, in Cilicia, are mentioned. He is said by one author 
to have died in Lycaonia. They all agree that he was crucified 
with his head downward. A spurious " gospel " bears his name. 



CHAPTEK V 



IN CAN A AND CAPERNAUM. 




KANA EL JELIL. 



Having accomplished his proposed journey, we next find Jesus 
in Cana of Galilee. This village is not named in the Old Testa- 
ment. According to Josephus ( Vita, c. 16), it lay 
Cana of Galilee. half a dayJg j ourney f rom the sea of Gennesaret, 

and about two days from the Jordan, where Jesus had had his in- 
terview with Nathanael, who probably accompanied him to Cana. 
In his Researches (iii. 204), Dr. Eobinson establishes it as Kana- 
el-Jelel, 3£ hours K \ E. from Nazareth. 

Here Jesus performed his first miracle, which 

The first miracle. ig tlmg re p 0rte d in John ii. 1-10: 

John "' "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana 

of Galilee ; and the mother of Jesus was there : and both Jesus was 

called [invited], and his disciples, to the marriage. And when 



TN CANA AND CAPERNAUM. 121 

they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, i They have 
no wine.' Jesus saith unto her, 'Woman, what have I to do with 
thee? mine hour is not yet come.' His mother saith unto the ser- 
vants, 'Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.' And there were set 
there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying 
of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith 
unto them, ' Fill the water-pots with water.' And they filled them 
up to the brim. And he saith unto them, ( Draw out now, and 
bear unto the governor of the feast.' And they bare it. When 
the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, 
and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the 
water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, 
and saith unto him, ' Every man at the beginning doth set forth 
good wine; and when mem have well drunk, then that which is 
worse : but thou hast kept the good wine until now.' " 

The particularity with which minutiae are mentioned renders it 
probable that the historian John was one of the party ; that he, and 
Andrew, and Peter, and Philip went forward with 

their new Pabbi, detaching themselves from John .. ,,. 

7 & orable wedding-. 

and attaching themselves to Jesus. From Betha- 
bara on the Jordan, where the last incident is mentioned, to Can a 
in Galilee, there would be parts of three days consumed in the 
journey. Jesus would pass through Nazareth by the most natural 
route. Perhaps there he would be told that his mother had gone 
to Cana, to the wedding of some familiar friend of the family, 
and that an invitation had been left for him, and any friend who 
might be with him, to follow her as speedily as convenient. His 
friends continue with him, and they go in a body to Cana: There 
\n event in the life of Jesus occurs which makes this the most 
memorable wedding upon record. The marriage of no imperial 
parties has been so frequently mentioned as this of these unknown 
peasants of Galilee. No wedding has invoked from genius so 
many poems and so many passages of eloquence. Who the bride 
and bridegroom were we have no means of knowing. They were 
simple people, of the rank of Mary, and probably poor, as we learn 
that the wine fell short. 

Jesus had heretofore performed no miracle. That we are ex- 
pressly told by the historian John (ii. 11), who thus sets aside all 
those grotesque and monstrous things which are related of Jesus 
in the Apocryphal books. But Mary knew his miraculous con- 



122 INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 

ception and the marvels attending his birth. She had watched 
his growth in wisdom and power, and although 
j she had never witnessed a miracle, she had always 

found him a wise adviser in times of domestic 
emergencies. How far he had communicated to her his views of 
his mission we cannot know. They must have had long conver- 
sations and deep communings about himself; and if he had nevei 
given her any hints about his Messiahship, the Jewish woman had 
Jewish hopes in her heart, and she connected them with the sacred 
secrets of his birth and brooded over them with her maternal love. 
There is a great probability that the disciples who were with 
Jesus told her how they had come to form that brotherhood, on the 
ground of the Baptist John's having proclaimed him as the Mes- 
siah. The Baptist was the highest authority then. So now Mary 
received him, after his absence, in the double character of son and 
Messiah. And she knew that the Messiah was to work miracles. 
The hour seemed to have arrived; the wine failed. She spoke 
to Jesus, very delicately, merely informing him of the fact. It 
was very natural. The reply of Jesus seems un- 
e rep y o na turally harsh. That somehow it was a reproof 

•J GSHS 

is obvious. That some rebuff should come, we 
might, upon reflection, expect. Our knowledge of Jesus after all 
we have read makes it natural. He would do nothing at the mere 
prompting of pride or vanity. And if Mary believed or suspected 
him to be the Messiah, she should wait until his own spirit prompt- 
ed the extraordinary act. 

And yet the words are not as harsh as they seem in our English 
version, rwcu, " Woman," is an Oriental method of salutation to 
women of the highest rank, and Jesus used it upon the cross, in the 
season of his extreme suffering, and when he was exhibiting the 
most tender and unselfish regard for his mother. (See John xix. 
26).* Substitute "Lady," and see how different is the sound. But 
the fact that he chose to say "My Lady," instead of "My Mother," 
is significant. He had entered his work. This was his first meet- 
ing with Mary after his baptism, and he seems to have made her 
then feel the barrier which must ever thereafter be between them. 
Mary was to learn what many a woman has learned, how a great 
life-work interferes with the affections. She is to be "woman" 

* See also John xx. 15. 



IN CANA AND CAPERNAUM. 123 

to him, — a very dear mother, ever to be honored, but woman. 
Her husband had not been his father.* He knew himself now as 
the son of the God. His whole treatment hereafter, as we shall 
see, is on this platform. 

"What have I to do with thee?" is the translation of a difficult 
phrase. It seems to imply that they had different positions from 
which to see the demands of this occasion. She 
had a neighbor's and a mother's feelings. He had 
the sentiments becoming the Messiah, the Sent of God, and was 
to do what was necessary to make himself known in this work, 
and no more. It was not an ugly, rough, unfilial speech ; but it 
did reprove Mary, and stands forever against all that superstition 
which elevates her into a goddess who has power to command her 
son. We shall find that nowhere does Jesus encourage supersti- 
tion. 

The mother still felt that her great son would do something 
great. Perhaps he had intimated as much, and all that he checks 
in Mary is her too great forwardness. She tells the servants to be 
on the alert, although he had said what she could hardly have 
understood, what perhaps we do not understand — "My hour has 
not yet come." Gregory of Nyssen gives a turn to this which 
may be the solution of difficulties. He regards it as a question : 
"Has not my hour come?" He used it afterward on another 
memorable occasion. He will hasten nothing, he will delay noth- 
ing. But does not her speech to the servants show that Mary had 
had some intimation of what Jesus was going to do? 

The ceremonial punctuality of the Jewish religion was ob- 
served by this poor family. They had six water-pots, each hold • 
ing from two to three "firkins." This word 
signifies a measure of 8 gallons and 7.4 pints. If ewa er " p ° s ' 
we assign two firkins and a half (//.er^T^? is the original) as the 
average, then they held 133 gallons. They were water-pots, not 
wine-jars. They were filled with water at the command of Je- 
sus. He directed the servants to draw and carry to the " gover- 
nor of the feast," a person called in the original arc/iitrichinus, 
who held something like the place of the symposiarch, the master 
of ceremonies, the rex convivii, probably a guest who had kindly 
by request undertaken the office for the occasion. The servants 

* As Augustine says, " That in me which works miracles was not born of thee * 



124 



INTRODUCTION OF JESUS TO HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 



The miracle. 



dipped and bore it to the ruler of the feast, who, when he had 
tasted it, not knowing whence it was, called his friend the bride- 
groom, and pleasantly reminded him that it was customary to pro- 
duce the best wine at first, and when men had rather cloyed their 
palates by frequent potations, then to produce the inferior wine. 
" But," said he, " you have kept the good wine until now," until 
the very last. 

The historian pronounces this a miracle. It certainly is, or it 
is a contemptible farce played out by cunning collusion, or the 
whole history is false. We have no more right 
to suspect this history than most of Csesar's Com- 
mentaries on the War in Gaul, or the Annals of Tacitus. We 
must accept this, or reject almost every line of these histories. 
Accepted, the narrative shows that John, who seems to have been 
present, believed, so far from this being a trick, that it was really 
a miracle. 

There is nothing gained by any explanations of the palliative 

class, such as IsTeander's idea that Jesus " intensified (so to speak) 

the powers of water into those of wine." * Nor 

a ia lveexp a- -, Augustine's idea that such a miracle is wrought 

nations. J ° ° 

in our vineyards yearly, and Jesus simply has- 
tened the processes of nature by which water becomes wine.f 
This view is indorsed by Trench (On Miracles, p. 91), when that 
usually judicious writer compares this to "the unnoticed miracle 
of every-day nature," and speaks of the difference lying in " the 
power and will by which all the intervening steps of these tardier 
processes were overleaped and the result obtained at once." 
There is no comparison. There is in this act of Jesus in Cana 
no such basis as soil and germ, vine and grape, through which to 
propel the wine. It was a clear and sheer miracle, the simple 
basis being water and the result being wine. It was a miracle or 
nothing. We do no credit to our intellects by dodges or subterfuges. 



* One cannot ridicule so respectable 
and good a man as Neander ; but the 
pressure of the spirit of German criti- 
cism upon bis excellent mind may be 
measured by a note, in which he says: 
41 Compare as analogies the mineral 
spri?igs, in which, by natural processes, 
new powers are given to water; and 
the ancient accounts of springs which 



sent forth waters like wine — intoxica- 
ting waters. " We cannot wonder that 
Dr. Strauss laughs at Dr. Neander for 
such passages. 

f His words (in Ev. Joh., Tract. 8) 
are: "Illud autem non miramur quia 
omni anno fit : assiduitate amicit ad- 
mirationem." 



IN OANA AND CAPERNAUM. 125 

Trouble is given some commentators by the abundance of wine 
which Jesus made. It looks like " putting temptation in men's 
way," it is said. But does not the All-Father do 
that perpetually and plentifully % There is noth- f 
ing about us which is not open to that objection. 
Why does God allow grapes to grow ? Why did God give men 
appetites % All life is a submitting of the human spirit to th<! 
discipline of trial. 

The lesson to the disciples and to the world is wholesome 
They had been in the ascetic school of John. In the very open- 
ing of his public career Jesus teaches them that 
all the courtesies of life are to be respected ; that 
no man is to be so great as not to give a portion of his time to 
the demands of society; that indulgence in innocent pleasures 
should have the sanction of the loftiest and grandest natures ; 
that marriage is not to be discouraged because the work of some 
men in the world forbids them — as his forbade him — to partake 
the blessed sweetnesses of married love ; and that he came not 
to destroy but rectify, not to sadden but to transfigure all life by 
heightening the spiritual part of man and connecting his ordinary 
drudgery with the highest hopes ; by turning the water of ordinary 
existence into the wine of a generous, rich, and exhilarating life. 

"And his disciples believed on him." (John ii. 11.) 

After this Jesus, with Mary and her other sons, the half-broth- 
ers of Jesus, accompanied by the disciples, went down to Caper- 
naum, which lay on the western side of the Sea 
of Galilee, a place where we shall find him doino- 
many of his mighty works, and which, according 
to his prediction, has been lost from human geography so thor- 
oughly that no ecclesiastical tradition ventures to fix its site. Dr. 
Robinson exposes the views of all previous travellers in their at- 
tempts to identify the locality. (See Bibl. Researches, iii. %88- 
291.) The " not many days " seems to signify his eagerness to ba 
about his work, rather than to indicate any chronological space. 



PAET III. 

FEOM THE FIBST TO THE SECOND PASSOYEE IN 
THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 

ONE YEAR— PROBABLY FROM APRIL OF A.D. 27 TO APRIL OF A.D. 28. 



CHAPTEE I. 



John ii. 



CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. 

A Passovee approached. This great festival drew Jews to the 
Temple not only from all parts of Palestine, but from distant 
lands. Jesus went up to Jerusalem. On enter- 
ing the Temple he found in the Court of the 
Gentiles persons selling oxen, sheep, and doves, for sacrifices, and 
near them sat brokers making exchange of money for those who 
wished to purchase offerings. Perhaps these brokers also changed 
the foreign money of Jews from a distance into the sacred half- 
shekel, which alone was allowed to be paid in for the Temple 
capitation-tax, levied annually on every Jew of twenty years old 
and upwards. (Compare Matt. xvii. 24 with Exod. xxx. 13 ; 2 
Kings xii. 4; 2 Chron. xxiv. 6, 9.) * Jesus had witnessed this dese- 



* According to Hug, ' ' the ancient 
imposts which were introduced before 
the Roman dominion were valued ac- 
cording to the Greek coinage, e.g., the 
taxes of the Temple. Matt. xvii. 24; 
Joseph., B. I., vii. 6, 6. The offerings 
were paid in these. Mark xii. 42 ; 
Luke xxi. 2. A payment which pro- 
ceeded from the Temple treasury was 
made according to the ancient national 
payment by weight. Matt. xxvi. 15. 
[This is very doubtful.] But in com- 



mon business, trade, wages, sale, etc., 
the assis and denarius and Roman coin 
were usual. Matt. x. 29 ; Luke xii. 6 ; 
Matt. xx. 2 ; Mark xiv. 5 ; John xii. 5 ; 
vi. 7. The more modern state taxes are 
likewise paid in the coin of the nation 
which exercises at the time the greatest 
authority. Matt. xxii. 19 ; Mark xii 
15 ; Luke xx. 24."— Vol. i. p. 14. After 
all, however, some of these words may 
be translations. 



CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. 127 

oration of God's house every year from his early boyhood. He 
had seen that the secularized and demoralized priesthood allowed 
it. To him it had become intolerable. He had entered upon his 
mission. Probably rumors of him increased the crowd at this 
festival. Eighteen years before, in that very spot, he had said 
that he must be about his Father's business, and he certainly 
meant the work of God. This was the house of God. He would 
not endure the sight of its desecration longer. The cattle may 
have stood by in pairs, and rope — such rope as they were accus- 
tomed to use in leading beasts to the slaughter — lay near. The 
spirit of the old prophets was upon him. He did not speak. He 
acted. Seizing the rope he made a scourge, and drove these dese- 
crators out of the Temple. Whether he actually applied the lash 
to their backs we do not know. His presence, his act, so like 
that of one of their old prophets, may have exerted such a moral 
force upon their guilty consciences that they fled before the blow. 
He ordered the animals away, overturned the tables of the money- 
changers, and cleared the Temple. 

Lights and shadows ! We have seen him all sweetness at a 
wedding, beneficently turning away the shame of a potfr but lov- 
ing bridegroom by a miraculous supply of wine. We now behold 
him terrible to evil-doers. Among the holy poor he is all gentle- 
ness ; in the presence of merchants and rulers and multitudes he 
is the stern rebuker of the great wrong. The effect of this act 
upon the disciples was to deepen the impression of his Messiah- 
ship. Perhaps they recalled the words of John, " whose fan is in 
his hands." They certainly did recollect what David had sung 
in his sorrowful exile : " The zeal of thy house has eaten me up." 
(Ps. lxix. 9.) 

The Jews demanded his authority for this amazing act. The 

demand is to be regarded as coming i/om two classes. The more 

devout among the people must have lon^ regarded 

this proximity of the mart to the Temple a nui- , LS , a ™ 
r t J ,^^ r demanded. 

sance which should be abated. When this extra- 
ordinary young man, of whom they had heard vague but interest- 
ing statements, performed the act so boldly, it must have been 
agreeable to them, and probably increased their expectations of 
what he should do hereafter. They hoped he would by greater 
deeds of national importance furnish authority for believing that 
he did this as a Messianic act. The worldly and secular hated 



128 FIEST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUL. 

him foi it, but could not resent, as he placed it upon a religious 
ground and had some good people near who approved. All the 
traders could do was to make sullen demand for his authority, 
which they had a right to do, as only the Sanhedrim or a prophet 
could correct abuses in the Temple- worship, and the latter was 
always expected to demonstrate his prophetic authority by a mir- 
acle. 

His reply to that demand was enigmatical. It was : " Destroy 
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'* 
In order to appreciate the effect of this speech 
upon his hearers there are several things to be done. In the first 
place, we must remember that the disciples themselves did not 
understand the meaning of the saying until after the death of 
Jesus, and that neither they nor the Jews were furnished with 
the interpretation of this dark speech, which John gives in ii. 21, 
22. Then we must, as far as practicable, reproduce the state of 
feelings in the hearts of the Jews against which Jesus seems to 
have hurled this speech as a courageous reply to their defiance. 
Towards him personally they had no kind feelings. He had been 
associated with the denunciatory John the Baptist. He had 
made no overtures to ecclesiastical power or popular favor. His 
first public act seemed the deed of a zealot. But their Temple 
had become their idol. He himself intimated as much in a 
rebuke contained in one of his speeches. 

The Temple was the central figure among their national ideals. 
It had stood, in one form or another, on the same spot through the 
centuries, collecting around itself all the tender- 
est and sublimest associations of devotion and 
patriotism. It was the visible residence of the invisible Jehovah. 
It imparted a solemn sanctification to the whole land. It was the 
heart through which all the national blood flowed. It held those 
who were resident, and attracted Jews from every clime. Their 
co-religionists, dispersed among the nations, having no more place 
of business in Jerusalem, no more home there, no living associates 
of their youth there, nothing but sad memories in the city of the 
sepulchres of their fathers, saw, in the vision of the night, The 
Temple rise and stretch its arms like a great Mother, and heard 
a voice as from the Holiest of Holies call them back, in sounds 
more solemn than the thunder and more thrilling than a love- 
whisper — and they rose, and at whatever sacrifice of business or 



CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. 



129 



pleasure they turned their faces towards Jerusalem and stood 
with awful joy in the courts of the house of Jehovah. 

The people that heard Jesus speak this fearful enigma recol- 
lected that the Temple had been denied. They recalled the days 
of Antiochus Epiphanes, who had forbidden the 

observance of the law, and had set up the " abom- . „ ' 

7 r al recollections, 

ination of desolation " by making a sacrifice to 

Olympian Jove on the altar .of Jehovah ; * and they never forgot 
his loathsome end, when terror and remorse lashed him into an 
ignominious grave. " He came to his end, and there was none to 
help him." They recollected that Crassus, governor of Syria, on 
his way from Rome to fight the Parthians, plundered their Tem- 
ple^ and went forward to terrible defeat and captivity, and to a 
fearful death amid the desert sands. They had not ceased to feel 
that it was retribution from God, for his Temple's sake, which 
had sent Pompey's head to Caesar, and left his dishonored trunk 
on the shore of Egypt.;); 

Their love for their Temple was stronger than patriotism, or 
love of home, or the instinct of self-preservation. It was a pas- 
sion and a fanaticism. As truly as beautifully does Milman say, 
" The fall of the Temple was like the bursting of the heart of 
the nation." 

In such a state of mind the Jews heard this young teacher de- 
clare : " Destroy this Temple, and I will rebuild it in three days." 
Any careless speech in regard to the Temple was unpardonable ; 
but to talk lightly of its destruction was an intolerable outrage. 
And that is just what they and his disciples understood him to 
say, and he knew that they did so understand. The suggestion 
that he pointed to his body, indicating that he referred to his 



* Compare Diod. Sic, Eclog. xxxiv. 
1; Daniel xi. 31; xii. 11; 1 Mace. i. 
57; Josephus, Ant., xii. 5. 4. "The 
abomination of desolation " was proba- 
bly a small idolatrous shrine which was 
set up in the Temple on the 15th of the 
month Kisleu : just ten days after 
which the first victim was offered to 
Jupiter. The circumstances of the 
death of Antiochus Epiph. are narrated 
in Polybius (xxi. 2), and in Josephus 
(Ant., xii. , 1, et seq.). 

\ I find no other authority for this 

9 



than the paragraph in Josephus ( Wars, i. 
8. § 8) ; but the mention by him shows 
how any even reported disrespect to the 
Temple fired the Jewish heart. 

\ Pompey's fate is well known to all 
readers of history. Josephus says that 
Pompey's virtue kept him from carry- 
ing off the sacred treasure, but records 
the fact that he desecrated the Temple 
by entering the Holiest of Holies (Ant. , 
xiv. iv. 4), and examining those things 
which it was lawful for the priests 
only to behold. 



130 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LTFE OF JESUS. 



Retort cf 
Jews. 



the 



death and resurrection, is wholly inadmissible. If he had done 
so it must have been in sight of the Jews, or of his disciples only. 
He could scarcely have made the gesture significant to his disci- 
ples without also making it apparent to the Jews, and it is not 
consistent with the general purity and simplicity and elevation of 
his character to fancy him winking to his disciples and concealing 
a gesture from the crowd. They believed that he meant the ma- 
terial Temple in which they were standing. 

Their reply shows that : " Forty and six years was this Temple 
in building, and wilt thv>u rear it up in three days ? " This must 
refer to the completion of some main portion or 
principal wing of the Temple. Herod the Great 
had a taste for building, and had expended, and 
was still expending, vast sums and much time on this great work, 
in which he was assisted by the piety, the wealth, and the patri- 
otic pride of the Jews. From the time he had commenced this 
work to the time this reply was made to Jesus it was just forty-six 
years. Josephus (Ant., xvi. 11. 1) says that he began in the 
eighteenth year of his reign ; but in his Wars of the Jews (i. 21. 1) 
he says in the fifteenth, the dates being founded respectively 
upon the death of Antigonus and Herod's appointment by the 
Romans. If the latter date be taken, it will give twenty years to 
the birth of Jesus, and thirty years to this passover, making 
fifty from which if we take four years to correct our era, the 
epoch of which is just that much too late, we have forty-six 
years.* 

It was to Jewish ears a preposterous and a blasphemous thing 
in Jesus to intimate that the Temple should be destroyed, and to 
assert that he could rebuild it in three days. They 
shocked never forgave him. lie had hurt them in every 

sensibility. And Jesus knew it. And he made 
no reply and no explanation. In his first public acts he had ex- 
hibited a zeal that seemed headstrong ; he had certainly per- 
formed a most impolitic act. But it cannot be charged as an in- 
discretion or inadvertence, such as occur in every public man's 
life and give him great regrets. Jesus never regretted it. He 



* Alf ord (on John ii. 20) notices that 
the Temple was not completed till A.D. 
64, under Herod Agrippa II. and the 
procurator Albums; so that "was in 



building" must have referred to the 
greater part of the work then com- 
pleted. 



CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. 131 

must have known that he had virtually signed his own death- 
warrant. He awaited the result. We shall see how this one 
sentence of his rankled in the heart of the nation, was made the 
strength of the indictment on which he was executed, and con- 
fronted him in the shape of gibe amid the horrors of his cru- 
cifixion. 

He meant his own body. He thought of his death by violence, 
and his belief that he had power to take up his life again. He 
knew the unity of his own meaning and compre- 
hended the multiplicity of its relations. It might ,, e ^ surrec 10n 
refer to the desecration of the Temple by the men 
around him, or to its destruction by the Romans ; it might refer 
to the abolition of the Jewish form of religion and the recon- 
struction of faith on the basis of his resurrection. Here as 
throughout his whole public life (compare Matt. xii. 40) this thought 
of his resurrection was ever present to his mind. Subsequently 
he seems to have told John and the other disciples that his allu- 
sion, in the offending speech, was to "the temple of his body." 
But even then they could not comprehend, they seemed scarcely 
able to apprehend, the idea of the resurrection of the body. The 
whole meaning came upon them only after they believed that they 
had seen him alive after death.* 

An appeal may now be made to the candor of mankind against 

the disingenuousness of some modern critics. H any public man, 

say Pericles, or Csesar, or Cromwell, or AVashing- 

xt \ i -. t -. • it tp An appeal, 

ton, or JN apoleon, had plunged into public life as 

Jesus did, would it be fair to charge that his intent was to pan- 
der to the public taste, to study the tides of fortune, to adapt him- 
self to the desires of the masses, and thus to popularize himself? 
Suppose the act of cleansing the Temple would be agreeable to a 
few unsecularized devout old Jews ; it would be disagreeable to 
the large majority of ruling, influential people, and hugely dis- 
gusting to the traffickers themselves; while the speech of the 
Temple would give point to the rancor of those whom the act had 
offended, and shield their resentment from the allegation of being 
based upon personal grounds, while it would be poignantly afflic- 
tive to the sensibilities of the pious few who would, but for the 
speech, have favored the act. 

* Bead with care John iL 21, 22. 



132 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

On grounds of policy the act and the accompanying speech are 
wholly indefensible. If Jesus undertook the enterprise which is 

charged upon him by the critics, then he was sim- 
j. ' ply a fool, whose folly it would be difficult to 

match from all the recorded mistakes of men. 
But whatever else be charged, he is not accused of folly. Then, 
he did not seek to draw men to his fellowship by going to their 
opinions. Then, he was an independent thinker and actor. Then, 
he was not politic. If, since his death, it be ascertained that he 
has exerted a vast influence over human thought and action, — if 
now he reigns king in the hearts of multitudes of men, — then it is 
possible to live a great life and die a great death without a policy. 
If devout men see in the life of Jesus something supernaturally 
beautiful, we shall find, in an undogmatic study of his career, the 
thing of all things most beautiful, pure naturalness. 

It would seem from the history that during his attendance upon 
the Passover Jesus did many wonderful things, even performed 

miracles, which convinced many that he was the 
d rfuT ""k 7 W ° n " Messiah. They seemed more willing to trust him 

than he was to trust them. His intimate friend 
and biographer says that it was because "he knew what was in 
man." He knew that in the fervor of recent conviction they 
might soon form a mob of excited adherents, whose fidelity could 
not endure the test which such teaching and discipline as he would 
enforce would bring upon them. He was in no haste. He came 
to plant principles and demonstrate truths, not to create factions 
and secure partisans. 



CHAPTER II. 



NICODEMUS. 



Jesus was a light that could not be hid. The more thoughtful 

had begun to study the phenomena of his character and career. 

Even members of the Sanhedrim began to take 

, . , . , . . .,, j. -,. P Nicodemus. John 

interest m Ins teachings, — most with reelings or 

aversion, a few with solicitude, and one at least 
with kindly inclination. That one was Nicodemus. There must 
have been others whose observation had led them to desire to 
know more of Jesus. Such was Joseph of- Arimathea, who be- 
came a disciple, " but secretly for fear of the Jews." (See John 
xix. 38.) How many more men of mark were in this circle we 
have no means of knowing. John says (xii. 42) that " among the 
chief rulers many believed on him." Of these we take Nicode- 
mus as at once the leading spirit and the representative man. 

He was a Pharisee as to faith, and a member of the Sanhedrim 
as to position. He had all the traditionary influence of his sect 
and his office to bind him to propriety and conservatism. He was 
not young. The Talmud * speaks of a rich Sanhedrist, called 
Nicodemus Bonai, who, at a great age, was alive at the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem. There are no means of identifying this man 
with the Nicodemus spoken of by John, but there is no reason, so 
far as I know, why he may not have been the same. 

This Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. The interview is re- 
ported condensedly by John, but is exceedingly interesting, as 
showing how ready Jesus was to set forth the most profound doc- 
trines to any willing mind, even when that mind is still held in 
the bondage of old prejudices. Timid, afraid of the ban of his 

* The Nicodemus of the Talmudists the disciples of Jesus. Olshausen re- 



is called k ' son of GTorion," is represented 
as one of the three richest men in Jeru- 
salem, living at the time of the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, being then among 



fers to Sanhedr., fol. xliii. 1; Aboth 
Rab. Nathan, cap. 6; Tract. Gittin, 
fol. lvi. 1, etc 



L34 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



Jesus regarded 
with mistrust. 



caste, holding tenaciously to his prejudices by force of habit, yet 
candid, loving truth, seeking a sure footing cautiously, he felt 
himself bound, as all honest minds are bound, to give a fair hearing 
to every new word and an impartial examination to all new claims. 

Jesus had not yet classed — as he did afterward — the hypocrite 
with the infidel, the Pharisee with the Sadducee. He had not re- 
peated with emphasis the denunciations of John 
the Baptist. But his style was not such as would 
be pleasing to the Pharisees, and they did not 
know how far he was to advance his claims. They regarded him, 
therefore, with mistrust. Nicodemus saw more in him than most 
of the other Pharisees perceived. Just such was the posture of 
his mind when he determined for truth's sake to have an inter- 
view with Jesus, but for the sake of prudence to have it at night. 

Let us now examine the narrative in John in the true historic 
spirit, laying aside the dogmatic prejudices of education. 

Nicodemus calls Jesus "Pabbi," the title of respect to an 
teacher. His opening speech is complimentary, 
but cautious. It gives a sufficient reason for his 
coming, and implies a careful guarding against 
admitting too much. " We know that from God 
thou hast come — a Teacher" Who are " we " ? It was not con- 
fined to himself.* There would have been no propriety in such 
stately official mode of expression in a secret nocturnal interview. 
He was representing others as well as Knnself , what a very few 
others, like Joseph of Arimathsea, were ready to admit, and what 
Nicodemus thought the whole Sanhedrim, at that time, in their 
hearts, believed. Here is a discovery of the impression already 
made by Jesus upon the most elevated and thoughtful minds of 
his nation. "We know this much, that thou hast come from 
God — that thou hast a divine mission to the people — as a teacher." 
Only that, no more, is admitted. They are not carried away by 
any enthusiasm in his behalf, but they are stimulated to learn 
what he can teach them. He must not be elated by this admis- 
sion, for it is qualified by a logical reason : " for no man can do 
the wonderful things thou doest, if God be not with him." 



acknowledged 



Address 
Nicodemus. 



of 



* It is noticed that the phrase "we 
know" is the current characteristic 
formula of the proud Pharisees, who 
held the key of knowledge for them- 



selves and withheld it from the common 
people. We shall meet it frequently as 
we proceed. 



NICODEMUS. 135 

To what does all this amount? Not very much. It implies 
that while the chiefs had made no high estimate of John, be- 
cause John had performed no miracle, Jesus had 
made a profound impression upon the rulers: Caution of 

. , . , . . Nicodemus's ad- 

one is sent, or comes, to examine nis claims pri- ^ 

vately and dispassionately. He says " we," very 
generally perhaps, as Stier thinks, to shelter himself from express- 
ing his own convictions, and so as to be able to draw back if 
necessary : " thou hast come " is in Greek a pointer to ep-fcofievos, 
the " Coming One," and if Nicodemus used a precisely parallel 
word in Hebrew or Aramaic — in one of which dialects the con- 
versation must have been maintained — he might have seemed to 
involve a recognition of the Messianic mission of Jesus ; which 
recognition, however, is immediately withdrawn in the word 
" teacher," — the Messiah expected by the Jews being not teacher 
but king. He further proceeds to thin out his address by the 
phrase, " if God be not with him." 

A great fall from the almost promise of recognizing the Mes- 
siah ! He is so afraid of making that acknowledgment of the 
Messiahship of Jesus that he stops short and fails to ask a question 
as to the coming kingdom of God. He had long felt that the 
heavenly kingdom should come, and must be near, in spiritual 
power. His whole people were ardently longing for it. From 
that lofty expectation he drops down to the idea of a mere science, 
learning, a school, the founder being a mere teacher ! The idea 
was not Jewish. Those who had come from God were prophets, 
foretelling and denouncing, or announcing, not teaching. This 
scientific Sanhedrist begins to blunder as soon as he mingles the 
spiritual and the material. A teacher working miracles indeed ! 

And yet a sincere desire to know the truth must have been at 
the bottom of this man's heart. The mysterious young Rabbi 
recognized this, as his whole treatment shows. 
As soon as Mcodemus had " laboriously achieved 
Ms introductory speech," as Stier describes it, or, as I think, 
paused from mere confusion, having given no good reason for his 
visit, Jesus made a reply, which is the first and perhaps the most 
dogmatic of his utterances. He lets down upon the mind of 
Nicodemus the weight of the central truth of his system, veiled 
in figurative language. Looking down into the eyes and heart of 
the learned Pharisee, he says solemnly : " Verily ', verily ', J say to 



136 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

you, if any man be not lorn anew, he cannot enjoy the kingdom 
of God:' 

Jesus knew the general expectation of the approaching king- 
dom. Nicodemus shared it. He had approached Jesns to ascer- 
tain, it would seem, what connection existed between his miracles 
and his doctrine. The miracles seemed phenomena wnicn de- 
clared the nearness of the kingdom of the Messiah which Daniel 
(vii. 14) had taught him and his nation to expect. As a Jew, a 
Pharisee, a ruler, he had prescriptive right to a place in this 
kingdom ; but it was quite probable that this young teacher could 
give him instruction as to the best way to enter, to see, to enjoy 
the Messianic kingdom. 

The general drift of this sudden speech seems to be this : You 

have come to me as if learning could do everything ; but it is not 

by new learning, but by new life, that one is to 

eamug o is en £ er G- 0( p s kingdom : and a new life comes by a 
reply. . 

new birth. Luther paraphrases it thus: "My 

teaching is not of doing and leaving undone, but of a change in 
the man : it is not new works done, but a new man to do them ; 
not another mode of living only, but a new birth." He takes 
Mcodemus down from the lofty platform of his official rank and 
Pharisaic self-sufficiency, and throws him out among the multi- 
tude of men by telling him that not rank and learning will save, 
but any man, whoever he may be, who has not had the experience 
which Jesus indicates by the phrase yevvrjOr) avwOev, "be born 
afresh," such a man cannot understand by experiencing and enjoy- 
ing (for such the word Ihelv means) the kingdom of God. 

Nicodemus would have received no shock from the idea of the 
new birth if it had been spoken of the proselytes from the heathen, 
who stood at the door of Judaism applying for admission. When 
such a one was baptized he was, in the Rabbinical view, " sicut 
parvulus jam natus," as a new-born babe. But the shock lay in 
the sweeping statement which turned all the Jews — rulers, Phari- 
sees, Scribes — out-doors, to seek admittance afresh. 

The word avcoOev in this conversation has been a puzzle to 

critics. And it is the important word, on our understanding of 

which will depend our comprehension of this 

puzze oc speech of Jesus. It is to be recollected that 

Jesus spoke in the Aramaic tongue most probably, and John 

records in Greek the conversation which Jesus had reported tc 



NICODEMTTS. 13'l 

him. Now, for the Greek word is there a corresponding word in 
the Aramaic, with a double meaning? If so, then the more 
remote meaning might throw light npon the word, showing that 
it meant of God, as the kingdom of God is mentioned, or that it 
bore the meaning which the Apostolical nsage subsequently closely 
connected with the being born again, namely, from heaven, e/c 
tov ovpavov, so that avcoOev might be synonymed with ovpavoOev. 
But Grotius has shown that there is no such word in the Aramaic. 
We must, therefore, give the closest possible translation of ayco0ev, 
and that must mean " anew," or " afresh," or " entirely anew," or 
" from the beginning." Nicodemus makes a reply which shows 
that he so understood it, namety, as a totally new birth experi- 
enced by one at his maturity. This is not conclusive, as Mco- 
demus might have misunderstood Jesus, but it is corroborative, 
as it gets exactly the most natural meaning of the word. 

In all these studies of Jesus we are not concerned to learn 
what the official expounders, commentators, and preachers have 
agreed is to be the conventional interpretation of the words of 
Jesus, but to discover by calm and patient research into the 
original documents what this remarkable Teacher really did 
mean. We are not, however, to despise the opinions of others, 
especially when they seem formed upon impartial examination. 
In this spirit we are to encounter another phrase, namely, " the 
'kingdom of God." 

It may be noticed here that it is not usual with John. Indeed it 
does not occur in his gospel outside this conversation. This is inci- 
dental evidence of the fidelity with which John reports the conversa- 
tion, not changing any phrase, however it differ from his own modes 
of thought and expression, as any critic must see that this does. 

We know that the Jews looked for a temporal kingdom of 
material splendor, in which Jehovah's Messiah should reign, and 
which should have sanctity from the Divine Presence and won- 
derful spiritual manifestations, as it should have paramount 
authority from its political predominance. Now, just as a Jew 
was gross and materialistic in his tendencies, this kingdom fig- 
ured itself to him on its earthly and material side ; and just as he 
was devout and spiritual in his tendencies, this kingdom presented 
itself to him at of the soul and spirit of a man, with heavenly 
characteristics. Nicodemus seems to have had very mixed ideas 
of the kingdom. 



138 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

" The kingdom of God " must reasonably mean as much aa 
this : a government in which God is king, which, being an ab- 
straction, we can concretely think of, so far as 

The kingdom of , . i i ^ i * 

G , each man is concerned, only as the surrender of 

that man to the rule of God, the total removal of 
rebellion out of his heart, the destruction of the principle and 
spirit of rebellion from his soul, so that freely and affectionately 
is he loyal to God, — a spiritual change so great that it is quite 
equivalent to a new creation, a new birth into a new life ; and 
then, as two or more come to be in that state, we have a com- 
munity bound to God by the allegiance of love, and to one another 
by the loving temper which comes into the heart when it yields 
its will to the will of God. 

Now, if we have really found not only a reasonable but a 
probable meaning of this phrase, as Jesus used it, it will follow 
that all his conversation with Mcodemus and all his subsequent 
discourses will consist with this theory, and that he directed the 
labors of his life to the forming upon earth just such a body of 
loving subjects to the law of love and to, the Lord of love. If 
this shall fail to appear as we evolve the biography of Jesus, then 
have we failed of reaching his meaning. Let us see. 

The reply of Nicodemus was, " How is a man able to be born, 

being old ? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb 

and be born?" If this be taken as proof that 

eaiaingo .. i< > j^ co( j eiimg understood Jesus as meaning fleshlv 

dermis s reply. , ° " 

birth, it would simply prove him a fool, and with 

such an idiot Jesus could have had no conversation. It is sur- 
prising how generally this has been supposed to be the meaning 
of Nicodemus. But let the reader reflect that this was no child, 
but a man advanced in years, holding a high office, having a 
trained mind, being skilful in detecting the meaning of speech, 
learned in the Scriptures of his religion, which must have made 
his mind familiar with the couching of deepest spiritual significa- 
tion in figurative language. He knew that Jesus meant a rebuke 
and an instruction. The rebuke was this: You, Nicodemus, 
have come to me as to a mere teacher to be told something new 
about the kingdom of God ; I tell you this, that you cannot be 
instructed into that kingdom, schooled into it, educated into it 
You cannot see the kingdom of God from afar. You cannot see 
t with your natural senses. You must be spiritually re-created, 



NICODEMTTS. 139 

must have not exactly a palingenesis, being born again, bnt a 
totally new, fresh birth into a life no emotions of which you have 
ever felt, and no function of which you have ever discharged. 

The reply of Nicodemus is in the disputatious temper of the 
learned. It ran somehow thus : Is that your view of " the king- 
dom of God " % If so, it throws all our mere Scriptural learning, 
ecclesiastical position, and supposed prescriptive rights to the 
winds. But, young man, you are undertaking a most fruitless 
mission. Such spiritual fresh-generation is wholly impracticable. 
It is easier to effect physical changes than spiritual. It is easier 
to create a body than a soul. But you know that no old man 
can repeat the process of his physical birth : it will be more 
clearly impracticable for him to have a new spiritual birth. 

It was not that ISTicodemus failed so much to tcnderstand Jesus 

as to believe him. He saw the meaning, but attempted to confute 

the proposition of Jesus by a kind of reductio 

r AT . , Lack of belief. 

ad aosurdum. JNicodemus answered as many a 

learned man answers when some new phase of truth is presented 
which he cannot fail to see, but which he cannot embrace because 
he has not the moral strength — indeed, who has ? — to throw down 
all the prejudices of his education. 

The response of Jesus is : "I most assuredly declare unto you, 
if one be not born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the 
kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is 
flesh ; what is born of the spirit is spirit." The esponse 
baptism of proselytes was considered a new crea- 
tion, so that old relationships were so totally broken as to permit 
a convert to marry his own sister without crime. Nicodemus 
knew what baptism was — that of the Jewish ritual and that of 
John. He and the other Pharisees had despised the baptism 
of John because it was a baptism of repentance. Jesus must 
have known that the mind of Mcodemus would revert to baptism 
at once. The language must, then, have some reasonable inter- 
pretation consistent with that fact. Baptism was known by Nico- 
demus and by Jesus to be a mere external rite, a cleansing of 
the outward man, but as intended to symbolize an interna] puri- 
fication, else it were a senseless ceremony. The religions of the 
world had aimed at the reformation of the external man. Juda- 
ism especially did so, more especially Phariseeism. It was water 
Spirit was needed. There must come a spiritual new creation. 



140 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

Then, in reply to Nicodemus's reductio ad ahsurdum, Jesns 
makes statement of a well-known principle in physiology and 
psychology, that that which begets imparts its nature to that 
which is begotten. If a man could go into his mother's womb 
and be horn again he would be horn the same, and nothing would 
come of this. If the Spirit of the Almighty God make the new 
spiritual creation there is no longer any difficulty to be objected. 

Did he mean the highest spiritual activity in the universe, 
namely, the Spirit of God f In the original the word Trvevfjua 
is used where we have " spirit " and where we 
have "wind" in the common English version, 
which is quite accurate in both cases, notwithstanding the uncriti- 
cal suggestion that the word should be translated by " spirit " or 
" wind " throughout the passage. We know that the word means 
both spirit and wind, and, if there be nothing to the contrary, 
should be translated by one word or the other in any passage, 
unless a grammatical reason appears to the contrary. Such rea- 
son does occur here in the word ovtcds, translated " so " — " so is 
every one," etc. This means comparison, and comparison involves 
at least two ideas. 

If ISTicodemus had had time to reflect he might have recol- 
lected that water cannot produce water ; dead flesh, a body with- 
out a soul, has no power to procreate ; spirit, life, must be in 
man or woman before fatherhood and motherhood — so all gen- 
eration, or all creation, strictly speaking, comes from the Spirit 
of God, that Spirit being the real primal creator. That seems the 
reason why water, having been alluded to, is not mentioned 
again nor pressed ; as if he had said, " You may have a body, you 
may have a soul, you may have conformed outwardly and mended 
your external life, as baptism or water indicates ; all very well, 
but there must he a fresh creation of the soul." 

In the report of this conversation, Alford * has called attention 
to the use of the neuter in the original to yeyevvrj/jLevov (that 
which is begotten or born) as denoting the universal application 
of this truth, and Bengelf to the same grammatical fact, as 
denoting the very first stamina or groundwork of new life, before 
sex can be predicated of the embryo. The reception of spirit 
into this merest flesh gives the first impulse of life, from which 



* Greek Testament, in loco. \ t Grammar, in loco. 



NICODEMUS. 141 

everything else is determined. The effect of the loftiest spiritual 
actor is to elevate and spiritualize the very spirit of man. 

Perhaps at this moment Jesus and ISTicodemus heard the breath 
ing of the night-wind. 

And then was adduced the most natural possible illustratior 
from the physical world in the case of the wind — most natural 
because in the language which Jesus spoke, as 
well as in that in which John reported, the same ., a ^ nsges e 

r ' the word. 

word means wind and spirit. In Ecclesiastes 
(xi. 5) it is used as an image of the inexplicable, and in Xeno- 
phon * as a symbol of the Deity, whose essence is invisible and 
who is to be traced only by his operations, f The points of re- 
semblance are striking. The motion of the spirit of a man is 
more nearly resistless than his body, and the spirit of God must 
be wholly resistless when it moves. The results of the operations 
of the spirit of man are perceptible, and so are those of God's 
spirit. The mode of operation, in each case, is totally incompre- 
hensible. In these three particulars the resemblance is striking. 
The whence, the where, the whither, in each case, are unknown. 
We can examine only results. 

All this speech of Jesus should have shown Mcodemus that 
Jesus taught that for entrance into, and enjoyment of, the king- 
dom of God, a man needs something, the production of which 
cannot be traced, as in the case of culture or education of any 
kind, and is as necessary as natural birth, in which spirit comes 
to join flesh, and is as incomprehensible. No man understands 
his birth ; every man knows that he was born, and is conscious 
that he is alive. Eo man understands the coming of the Spirit 
of God into his spirit, but he must know that it has come. 

Nicodemus replied, " How can these things be ! " It is not a 
question for information. It is the exclamation 
of surprise. He has been carried into mysteries Surprise of Nl * 

_ , ■*■ _ J codemus. 

ot the soul. Jesus answered, " Art thou a teacher 
of Israel, and hast thou had no experience of these great spiritual 
changes ? " This is a humiliating rebuke to his arrogant excla- 
mation. He ought to have known such scriptures as Psalm li. 
12 ; Ezek. xviii. 31 ; xxxvi. 24-28 ; Jeremiah xxxi. 33 ; Zechariah 
xiii. 1 ; and he ought to have had spiritual experiences of his 



* Memorab, iv. 3, 14. | f Tholuck, in loco. 



142 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JEStJS. 



own. Then Jesus began to teach him. " I solemnly declare untc 
you that we * speak what we know, and testify what we have 
seen, and yet ye receive not our testimony." 

The plural form has no special significance, unless Jesus in- 
tended to give a large and solemn dignity to the utterance, or to 
set his " we know " against Mcodemus's " we know." The affir- 
mation is of positive personal knowledge on the side of Jesus, and 
the allegation is of an unbelieving rejection upon the part of 
Mcodemus and the Jews. Jesus adds: "If I have shown you 
things of the earth, and you believe not, how can you believe if ] 
show you things of heaven ? Eo one has ascended into heaven 
but he that came down from heaven, namely, the Son of Man, 
whose residence is in heaven." 

Here Jesus makes claims for himself of the most extraordinary 

character. He affirms himself to be a personal witness of the 

things which are invisible to men, all the heaven- 
Jesus claims i ,1 • tt l. t_* • j. tt 
ly things. He asserts his own pre-existence. He 
pre-existence. J - o # r 

asserts his coming into the world on a mission. 
He asserts that his real residence is in heaven ; that where he is is 
heaven. There is no evading this meaning. He intended Mco- 
demus to understand him so. We have a phrase in English to 
this effect — " the words were calculated to make a certain impres- 
sion," — meaning that such would be a hearer's natural interpreta- 
tion, although such meaning might have been totally absent from 
the mind of the speaker. But here we go further than that, and 
say that Jesus meant to convey what the words are calculated to 
convey. He was too wise, Mcodemus was too important a lis- 
tener, the conversation was on too solemn a theme to allow the 
slightest carelessness of diction. He must have given it with pre- 
cision to his biographer John, and John must have been most 
careful in the report, for this is altogether the most important oc- 
casion of speech which Jesus ever had. The point in his life and 
the character of his listener made it the occasion to render the 
most careful version of his doctrine. Whether his doctrine was 



* It may entertain the reader to see 
how much learned difference there has 
been about this simple use of the 
plural form. Euthymius, a Byzantine 
commentator of the twelfth century, 
says that it means Himself and his 
Father ; Bengel, Himself and the Holy 



Spirit ; Beza and Tholuck, Himself and 
the Prophets ; Luther and Knapp, Him- 
self and John the Baptist ; Meyer, Him- 
self and Teachers like Him ; Lange and 
Wesley, All who are born of the Spirit ; 
while De Wette and Liicke regard it as 
only a rhetorical plural. 



NICODEMUS. 143 

true or not, it is not our purpose now to decide ; we are simply 
striving to ascertain what he said and what he meant. 

It must be remarked that Jesus claims another thing: that 
what he says must be believed, not known or understood, because 
lie says it. He flings away the title of teacher, 
which Nicodemus bestowed. He is the Heavenly Hef 
Assertor of heavenly things and speaks with par- 
amount authority. 

And Jesus made this solemn statement to Nicodemus : " As 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, it is absolutely 
necessary that thus the Son of Man be lifted, that every man 
trusting in him should have perpetual life. For God loved the 
world so, that he gave His son, the only begotten, that every one 
who trusts in him may obtain perpetual life and not perish. For 
God sent not His Son into the world that he should damn (or 
condemn) the world, but that the world might be saved through 
him. He who trusts in him is not damned (or condemned) ; but 
he who trusts not is damned already, because he has not confided' 
in the name of the only begotten Son of God. But this is the- 
damnation (condemnation), that light has entered the world, and 
men have preferred the darkness to the light because their deeds 
were evil ; for every one who does vilely hates the light, and shuns 
it, lest his deeds should be detected and convicted. But he that 
does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be mani- 
fested that they are done in God." 

Here is an open statement by Jesus that he knows — he is con- 
sciously positive — that he is the " only begotten " Son of God, 
whatever that may mean. John must have receiv- 
ed the word from Jesus himself, and it can only , . no 

7 J claim. 

mean a more intense nearness to God than it is pos- 
sible for language to convey. The word tells us something which 
we can understand, and, as is often the case with prof oundest think- 
ers, intimates more. We see the ocean out to the horizon, but the 
soul feels that the ocean stretches far beyond. Not simply as 
Eugene but as Monogene Jesus was known in the spiritual world. 
He says still further, that Moses lifted up the serpent on the 
pole in the wilderness, as related in Numbers 
xxi., as a symbol of himself, whether Moses so L . w0 grea c 

, . ' trines. 

understood it or not. He claims this act as 

typical. So he was to be crucified. It was a necessity. He, as 



144 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

harmless as the Nechustan to which Moses directed the eyes of 
the people who had been bitten by the harmful fiery serpents, — 
he must be lifted up and crucified. And that accomplished, 
every man who put his trust in that crucified Only Begotten 
would have a life that is endless. Here are the two main doc- 
trines of Jesus clearly set forth: 1, That his religion was not to 
consist in any intellectual assent to any statement of any moral 
proposition, but in a personal attachment to his person and a per- 
fect trust in Mm ; and, 2, That no caste, prescriptive right, rank, 
learning, or nationality, or form of creed, gave title to place in 
the kingdom of God, nor did any or all of these exclude any 
man. 

It thus threw down the barriers of Jewish prejudice and bigotry, 

and let the nations, the Gentiles, into the kingdom of God. The 

Jews believed that when the Messiah came he 

* n e -,, Ca ! ° 1C1 J would " damn " the Gentiles, and make them 
of God's love. ' 

" perish." Jesus told Mcodemus that it should not 
be so ; that God loved the world in sublime catholicity of affec- 
tion, in intensest depth of devotion, — so loved it as to give his 
peculiar one, his Monogene, that the world might hold to him as 
he held to God, that thus they might be drawn from perdition 
and lifted into the light ; that salvation, not damnation, was the 
intent of his coming, and that salvation lay not in knowledge 
but in faith ; not in processes of intellection and ratiocination but 
in the culture of the human heart planted in the divine heart, so 
that a man's deeds should be done " in God." 

He asserted salvation and everlasting life to be by trust in 
himself when crucified. 

Whether that be true or false, Jes%is taught it. 

Whether Nicodemus believed him or not, we shall see that 
Jesus never changed the essence of his dogmatic statement, never 
developed in himself thereafter, but told all out at the beginning, 
and demonstrated not only his belief in the truth of what he said, 
but the very truth of his sayings, as far as it is conceivable that 
any human being could render such demonstration, by any possi- 
ble life and any possible death. 



CIIAPTEK III. 



FROM JUD.EA TO SAMARIA. 



Some time after the Passover at which he had performed mir- 
acles, and had had the conference with Mcodernus, Jesus went 
with his disciples into the rural districts of Judaea, 
probably along the western side of the Jordan, _ Matfc - *y-» Mark 
opposite East Bethany. Precisely how long after . ' '* 

the Passover, there is no means of ascertaining. 
Nor do we know how he was en^a^ed in that interval. That he 
was constantly preparing the way for that " kingdom of God" oi 
which he spoke to Nicodemus there can be no doubt. Upon leav- 
ing the metropolis he seems to have been engaged in active min- 
istry, teaching and preaching, while his disciples baptized. 

The question naturally arises, why Jesus should have baptized \ 
Perhaps this is an answer. John came with the baptism of repent- 
ance, that the people might turn from their sins, 
and make ready to receive the Messiah. Such he i owe( j} 1 i sd ^ 1S i i 
recognized Jesus to be, and changed his style of to baptize, 
preaching, his place of baptizing, and perhaps his 
very formula. It was all now employed in concentrating the atten- 
tion of the people on Jesus as the Messiah. His first baptism had 
respect to the Coining One ; his second, to the One Come. Jesus in 
the beginning of his ministry may have had a baptism unto repent- 
ance administered by his disciples, because the question now had 
come to be whether the nation would accept him as the Messiah, 
and certainty none but those who were penitent could. If they 
had submitted to this baptism Jesus would have instructed them 
further in the doctrines of the kingdom of God. 

At this time John was baptizing in JEnon, near to Salim. It ig 
not possible to fix this site with precision positively. John (iii. 23) 
assigns as a reason for the selection of this spot that there were 
many springs there. The expression in John iii. 26 fixes it as on 
the west side of the Jordan. It could scarcely have been imme- 
10 



146 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

diateiy on the river, else the statement of its abundance of water 
would be superfluous. Eusebins and Jerome place Salim eight 
Roman miles south of Scythopolis. Dr. Thomson, who visited 
Scythopolis, now called Beisan, represents the valley as abound- 
ing in water, and as being one of the most fertile in Palestine. 
The tradition in this case is most probably correct. Mr Van de 
Velde reports finding a Mussulman oratory, called Sheykh Salim, 
near a heap of ruins about six English miles south of Scythopolis 
and two west of Jordan. ^Enon would seem to be the name of 
the district, and Salim of the town. 

Both the cousins were now baptizing, Jesus at the Jordan and 

John in Samaria. It would seem that some Jewish proselyte to 

Jesus had had a discussion with some of John's 

John and Jesus digciples in which he fi ke slightingly of the 
baptizing. i ff. i 

reformatory baptism of their master, and magni- 
fied the discipleship of Jesus, as if the latter had rendered the 
former superfluous. This kindled their sectarian and partisan 
zeal. Heated with this discussion, they immediately repaired to 
John, as if they were about to communicate some alarming intel- 
ligence. " Rabbi, he who was with you beyond Jordan, to whom 
you bore witness, behold the same is baptizing, and all come to 
him." They seem to have regarded the act of Jesus as a usurpa- 
tion of the place and the functions of John. The very phrase, 
" to whom you bore witness," shows that the disciples felt that 
John was superior to Jesus, and that the latter derived his chief 
consideration from the eulogy pronounced on him by John. 

This appeal brings forth from John a testimony for Jesus, re- 
markable not only as indorsing the new teacher in the most em- 
phatic possible way, but as presenting the char- 
JoJm'B 8elf - con - acter of John in the most sublime possible light. 
There is nothing grander in all history or fiction. 
No human being ever more thoroughly conquered his own spirit 
or governed his whole nature by a sense of right than did John 
the Baptist. 

He had felt stirring in him his wonderful genius for religion. 
Under what he believed to be divine impulses he attacked the 
sins and follies of the day in a style so vigorous as to attract atten- 
tion to himself. He had been the most popular public speaker of 
his generation. He had swayed the masses and made even roy- 
alty quail beneath his power. He had been the great prophet, 



FROM JUDJ31A TO SAMABIA. 



147 



and had enjoyed all the consideration which that position gives to 
any man. ISTow he sees another, one who had come to him for 
baptism, rising into public notice, attracting the attention of the 
highest ecclesiastics, and, as his own disciples inform him, with 
drawing the masses from himself. There is not a particle of env\ 
or anger or jealousy. The news which saddens his weak disciples 
gladdens their grand and glorious master. He had had a mission 
from heaven. He had fulfilled that mission. His work was 
done. There was nothing lacking but some movement on the 
part of the Divine Providence which should as clearly point out 
the way of his exit as it had designated his mode of entry, or 
should forcefully withdraw him from public life. He had not 
entered of his own accord ; he would not leave. He saw and felt 
that he was declining. He held himself ready to be extinguished. 
Grand man! There never was any other human being more 
sorely tempted ; there was never a man more triumphant over 
temptation. Beside one such noble act as this how all the achieve- 
ments of the Mmrods and Alexanders, the Caesars and the Napo- 
leons dwindle ! " He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he 
that taketh a city ! " 

His final testimony to Jesus is worth considering. I shall attempt 
a faithful paraphrase. He first lays down a general principle, 
and then applies it to Jesus and himself : — A man 
can assume nothing which heaven does not give: 
Each man lias his mission : To take anything 
else, assume any other character, is wholly useless : It would 
have been folly in me to attempt to play the part of the Messiah: 
The mask would have fallen at last : But I have done no such 
thing ; for I knew my mission : That mission is at the beginning 
of its end : You yourselves must bear me witness that I said that 
I was not the Anointed of Jehovah, but only his harbinger: Our 
ancient Scriptures have represented Humanity as the Bride, and 
the Coming Christ as the Bridegroom, the desire of the nations : 
I am only the paranymph, the Bridegroom's Friend : * I rejoice 
in the occasion which gives Humanity to the arms of her Lover 
and Bridegroom: The sound of the voice of the Bridegroom is 
to me the assurance that my mission, so far from being a failure, 



John's last testi- 
mony for Jesus. 



* The <pi\og tov Mf*<piov, friend of the 
bridegroom, was the regular organ of 
communication in the preliminaries of 



the marriage, and had the ordering of 
the marriage feast. 



148 FIEST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

has been a complete success : My joy is therefore full : It iff 

right and it is inevitable that he increase, and equally right and 
inevitable that I decrease! 

The saying of John the Baptist soon had a tragic fulfilment. 
Across the river from where he was baptizing Herod Antipas, the 
tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, had a frontier 
castle, known as Machserus, to which he seems to 
have drawn John, as it would appear hardly proper even among 
tyrants that he should have gone over to Samaria for his victim, 
and thus invade the procuratorship of Pilate. This Herod Anti- 
pas, while on a visit to Rome, had seduced the wife of his half- 
brother Philip, and brought her with him into the bounds of his 
tetrarehy. Having determined to make her his wife, and know- 
ing how it would shock the people, it occurred to him that the 
sanction of so influential a person as John the Baptist would 
secure him from popular violence. John, relying upon his per- 
sonal popularity, or confiding in the honor of the prince, probably 
went over on an invitation from Herod, who may have sent 
for him on the pretext that he desired instruction. He was then 
probably solicited to sanction this marriage. But Herod had mis- 
taken the man. John denounced it, and boldly told the wicked 
prince, "It is not lawful for you to have her.' 7 

Herod and Herodias were enraged at this interdict, and John 

was thrown into prison, and would have been killed at once if 

Herodias had had her way. But Herod was pol- 

Herod imprisons . . , . , , •', .. 

j otm itic, and knew that such violence would make an 

outbreak among the people, the \ery thing he 
dreaded. When Herod finally slew John he gave out as the rea- 
son that he feared lest the great influence which John had over 
the people should give him the power and inclination to raise a 
rebellion, as the people seemed ready to do anything which John 
commanded. This we learn from Joseph us.* This was the state 
reason publicly assigned ; but the real and private reason, as the 
Evangelical historians give it,f was the hatred which Herod and 
"Herodias felt because he would not sanction their wickedness. 

Jesus learned the fact of John's imprisonment, and that the 
Pharihees knew that through his disciples (for he never baptized; 
he was baptizing more than John ; he left his place on the Jordan 

* JosephuB, Ant., b. xviii, chap, v. | j- Matt. iv. ; Mark xvi. ; Luke iii 




JOHN'S PRTSON 



FROM JUDAEA TO SAMARIA. 149 

and proceeded to Galilee, being at that time under very great 

spiritual influence, or, as Luke says, " in the power 

r i n • • 11 /t i • -i t Tir ,, • Jesus removes 

of die Spirit." (Luke iv. 14: compare Matt. i\\, to Galilee 

Mark i., and John iv.) His way of usefulness 

being closed in one direction, he turned himself to other fields. 

His shortest way lay through Samaria, in which is the city of 

Shechem. This place is famous on many accounts. It is the most 

beautiful spot in all Svria. Modern travellers, as , , 

■' . J Sneclieni. 

well as ancient writers, lavish extravagant epithets 

upon it. Mohammed said : " The land of Syria is beloved by 

Allah beyond all lands, and the part of Syria which he lovetb 



U 




most is the district of Jerusalem, and the place which he loveth 
most in the district of Jerusalem is the mountain of Nablus." 
This is the modern name of Shechem, being a corruption ci 
Neapolis, a name given to the city by the Emperor Vespasian 
On this spot Abraham pitched his tent and built an altar, on his 
first migration to the Land of Promise. (See Gen. xii. 6.) After 
his sojourn in Mesopotamia, Jacob selected this place for a resi 
dence, and there he dug a well, which remains to this day. (See 



150 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESIJS. 

Gen. xxxiii. 18.) The city lies between the two monntains oi 
Ebal and Gerizim, and acquired fresh importance from the fact 
that from the former were read the curses and from the latter the 
blessings, upon the renewed promulgation of the law, when the 
people bowed their heads and acknowledged Jehovah as their law- 
ful king. (Deut. xxii. 11.) 

The hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans came to pass 
on this wise. Shalmanezer (b.c 721) had carried Israel away 

into Assyria, into captivity. This left their cities 
Origin of the , \ .■/.,. 

Samaritans. waste, and they remained m this condition until 

" the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, 
and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from 
Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of 
the children of Israel ; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in 
the cities thereof." (2 Kings xvii. 24.) There is some doubt as 
to who the king was that put this new un Jewish population in the 
land. The Samaritans themselves attributed their colonization 
to " Esarhaddon, king of Assur," or to " the great and noble 
Asnapper." (Ezra iv. 2, 10.) Perhaps the latter was a general 
who executed an order issued by Esarhaddon, who, on his inva- 
sion of Judah in the reign of Manasseh (about b.c 677), saw what 
a fine tract of country was lying waste on the frontiers of his em- 
pire and determined to repopulate it. These new Samaritans 
were not descendants of Jacob, but foreigners and idolaters. Nor 
did they all worship the same gods ; their idolatry was diverse. 
The land had been left desolate until wild beasts had taken pos- 
session, and annoyed the new Samaritans to such an extent that 
they attributed it to the vengeance of the god of the land, and 
sent an explanation of their miserable condition to the king. 
Upon which he despatched a captive priest to them, who taught 
them. The mingling of the true and false in their religion is de- 
scribed (in 2 Kings xvii. 41) thus : " So these nations feared Je- 
hovah, and served their graven images, both their children and 
their children's children." 

It is plain then that the new Samaritans were not of Jewish ex- 
traction, and their boast that Jacob was their father was not true 
Of some who may have returned after the captivity this might be 
affirmed, but the commingling of the families would in that case 
be loss of caste. 

After Judah had returned from the captivity these new Sama 



FEOM JUDMA. TO SAMAEIA. 



151 



ritans desired to assist in the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusa- 
lem. But the Jews knew that their conversion to 

... , , , , , m -. , ,, Hatred betweeij 

the true faith was at most but partial, and so they Jews and Samar , 

declined their help. Upon this the Samaritans tans, 
threw off every attempt to disguise and became 
open enemies, and harassed the Jews until silenced by Dariug 
Hystaspes (b.c. 519). The animosities thus begun grew from 
year to year, and deepened from generation to generation, until, 
more than a hundred years after the original rupture (b.c 409), 
Manasseh, a man of the sacerdotal order, having contracted an 
unlawful marriage with the daughter of Sanballat, the Persian 
satrap of Samaria, was expelled therefor from Jerusalem by 
Nehemiah, upon which he obtained permission from Darius Nb- 
thus, the king of Persia, to erect a temple on Mount Gerizim 
for the Samaritans, who had afforded him an asylum. This was 
all that had been lacking to make the hatred between the races 
intense. The schismatic, heretical Samaritans did all in their 
power to harass the Jews, who repaid their ill-treatment with in- 
describable hate. Josephus says that the Samaritans would way- 
lay the Jews on their journey to the Temple, so that many from 
the northern portion of the land were compelled to make a long 
detour east of the Jordan for fear of their enemies. It was so 
intolerable at one time as to lead to an armed conflict.* Jose- 
phus also tells a horrible story of Samaritans stealthily entering 
the Temple after midnight and scattering dead men's bones in 
the cloisters.f We are told that the Jews were accustomed to 
communicate to their brethren in Babylon the exact time of the 
rising of the paschal moon, by beacon-fires begun on Mount Oli- 
vet, and " flashing from hill to hill until they were mirrored in the 
Euphrates.";]: The Samaritans frequently deceived and disap- 
pointed those whose lamps were hanging on the willows over 
the waters of Babylon, by perplexing the watchers on the moun- 
tains by a rival flame.§ Josephus loses no occasion to tell us of 
Samaritan meanness and outrage, and there is no reason to disbe- 



* See a full account of this in Jose- 
phus, Ant. , xx. 6, § 1. 

f Ant, xviii. 2, § 2. 

% Smith's Diet., in loco. 

% Smith quotes Dr. Trench, who says : 
"This fact is mentioned by Makrizi 



(see De Sacy's Chrest. Arabe, ii. 159), 
who affirms that it was this which put 
the Jews on making accurate calcula« 
tions to determine the moment of the 
new moon's appearance (comp. Schoett- 
gen's Hor. Heb., i. 344.) " 



152 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

lieve any of his statements ; and if we had a Samaritan historian 
we should undoubtedly hear quite as much that was quite as true 
on the other side. We know that the Samaritan was publicly 
cursed in the synagogues of the Jews, that he could not appear as 
a witness in a Jewish court, that what he touched was considered 
as swine's flesh, and that no penitence or profession of faith upon 
his part would admit him through any door of proselytism, the 
Jew striving thus to cut him off from the hope of eternal salva- 
tion. " Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil," was the ordinary 
Jewish form for expressing utter contempt of any one. The vio- 
lence of this hatred was thus expressed : " He who receives a 
Samaritan into his house, and entertains him, deserves to have his 
own children driven into exile." 

We must recollect that this feeling of mutual contempt and 
hate had been deepening through centuries, — a combined political 
and religious feud, transmitted and intensified. It is necessary to 
recall this to be prepared for certain passages in the history and 
teaching of Jesus. 

On his return to Galilee he passed near Shechem, which the 
Jews of his day vulgarly called Sychar, Drunkard-town.* He 
paused to rest on a tract of land which Jacob 
had bequeathed to his favorite . son, Joseph, and 
where there was a well which Jacob had digged. This well is 
still in existence, is nine feet in diameter and one hundred and 
five feet deep. It usually now has five feet of water, but when 
Maundrell f visited it in the month of March it had fifteen. At 
this well Jesus rested. He allowed his disciples to go, or sent 
them, to the town to procure food. While he sat, weary, there 
came, perhaps directly from the city, a woman who belonged to 
the city. Between Jesus and this woman there occurred a con- 
versation remarkable in itself and for its effects. His interlocu- 
tor was not now, as in the case of Kicodemus, a learned doctor, of 
high moral character, but a simple woman, of bad moral charac- 
ter, unsophisticated by the schools, but held in bonds of preju- 
dice and weakened by sinful indulgence. Our curiosity is aroused 
to learn how this remarkable teacher deals with such a case as this. 

In the first place he arrests her attention by the polite request, 
• Permit me to drink." The woman looked at him, and his gen* 

* John iv. 5 ; but the grave historian I tempt, 
could not have used the name in con- I f Quoted by Tholuck, in loco* 



FROM JTJDJ3A TO SAMAUIA. 



153 



eral appearance confirmed the suspicion, created by his intona- 
tions, that he was a Jew. He had touched her 

human sympathies in some measure. A request e a ™ antan 

,. ..-.-, woman at the well, 

implies some superiority m the person addressed. 

He had transgressed the line marked 



She could give him relief. 





JACOBS WELL, SHECHEM. 



out by his people as dividing them from the Samaritans. Food 
might be purchased, but a Jew might not drink from the water- 
pot of a Samaritan. The woman was at once good-natured and 
satirical, and perhaps felt somewhat elated by the request. She 
bantered the traveller with the question, " How is it that you, 
being a Jew, ask water of me, a Samaritan woman?" 

This gave Jesus the opportunity to deepen her interest by a 
profoundly spiritual remark : " If you had known the bounty of 
God, and who it is that says, 6 Permit me to drink,' 

you would certainly have requested him and he p "? u 
t j i . ,. . „ « . versation. 

would, nave given you living water." bo intent 

was he upon his mission that he had forgotten his thirst ; but so 



154 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

skilful is he that he connects his highest moral lessons with the 
most transient circumstances. The saying seems to mean that 
water is one of the freest and fullest of God's gifts to man, and 
nothing but most extreme meanness would allow a man to deny 
his fellow a drink of water ; but God's bounties in the spiritual 
world are as full and free as in the physical world, and men can 
as readily obtain water of spiritual life as water of material life ; 
and Jesus professed to be able to impart this great gift to the soul 
of the Samaritan woman. This was the second revelation to her. 
She had met a Jew who was no ordinary Jew, but one who had 
the gift of life. He probably used the phrase " living water " 
in its double sense. He was dealing with one who was to be led. 
The woman's mind would seize the material suggestion, and thus 
be led to the spiritual truth. Her reply shows that this is what 
she did. " Running water " was in her mind. As Stier finely 
says, " Her words are incomparably picturesque in their echo of 
his." She says, still banteringly, " Sir, thou hast no bucket, and 
the well is deep : pray whence then have you this live water of 
which you speak % Surely you do not pretend to be greater than 
our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank of it himself, 
with his children, and his cattle." Here spoke out her national 
pride and prejudice. She claimed Jacob as her ancestor, proba- 
bly with no right or title to such a descent. She thinks that any 
man may be content with what Jacob used, and no Jew could be 
greater than the patriarch. 

Jesus waives the comparison, but presses home the great spirit- 
ual truth he had in hand, exciting her desire by a strange prom- 
ise. He says: "This water satisfies only the 

. Astra ^ e P rom - thirst of the bodv, and that for only a brief 
ise. " ' , 

space : no water from any earthly spring or well 

can slake the thirst of the inner man : but I can open such a 
fountain in the soul of man that no life, no immortality, shall be 
long enough to exhaust it." " Give me this water, sir, that I 
thirst no more, nor come to this well to draw," is her sudden ex- 
clamation. We must enter into this woman's character and his- 
tory to comprehend the strange mingling of naive simplicity with 
gross carnality. She might have seen that Jesus had in his words 
a moral that covered her life. At many broken cisterns of lust 
she had endeavored to find happiness. She begins partly to dis- 
cern that something great and noble is offered her by this stran- 



FROM JTTD.EA TO SAMARTA. 155 

ger, and expresses a half willingness to accept, but mingles a little 
jocularity with this expression that she may not too seriously com 
mit herself. " Sir, give me this water, that I never thirst again* 
nor come to this well to draw." 

And now Jesus thoroughly rouses her by probing her heart, 
and showing that he knew all her history, although they had 
never met before. The delicacy and gentleness with which 
Jesus touched the wound in this woman's soul is marvellously 
beautiful. " Go, call your husband, and return." It flashed her 
whole bad life before her eyes in an instant. " I have no hus- 
band," is her half -true, half -false, and very mournful reply. Je- 
sus did not upbraid her for her licentiousness and falsehood, but 
putting the very best face on her answer, replied with perfect 
politeness, " Well spoken ! You have had five husbands. You 
have a lover now, but he is not your husband : that word is true." 
She saw that this was a man who searched hearts. She knew 
that by death or divorce, probably for her own faults, she had 
been separated from the five men to whom successively she had 
been married, and now was openly or secretly licentious. Her 
sense of guilt was roused by even this most delicate handling 
of her case. Astounded by the disclosure, she acknowledged to 
Jesus that she believed him to be a prophet. 

But she did what is usually done under similar circumstances. 

She endeavored to engage Jesus in a theological discussion, and 

thus, by womanly tact, divert the conversation 

p -i , -i -i. . ... T -, She tries to 

from an unpleasant personal disquisition. Instead 

1 r ^ open a contro- 

of ingenuously acknowledging her case and seek- V ersy. 
ing instruction and help from this wise and gentle 
teacher, she turns from the practically useful question of how 
to pray, to the speculative and comparatively useless where. It 
was simply and swiftly done. " Sir, our fathers worshipped in 
this mountain: you Jews insist upon Jerusalem as the place 
where men ought to worship." Gerizim was in full view. Abra- 
ham and Jacob had lived and worshipped here. Here had been 
the temple built by Manasseh, and here the altar remained after 
John Hyrcanus had destroyed the schismatical temple. Sur- 
rounded by these sacred associations, she covertly propounds the 
question to Jesus whether she is to abandon her ancestral faith or 
reject his. It was the old "vexed question" which had kept bad 
blood between the Jews and the Samaritans for ages. It is the 



156 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

poor old question of " To what denomination do you belong ? * 
The discussion of this would cover her retreat. 

The reply of Jesus shows how a wise and healthful mind pre- 
serves a judicious adjustment of the forces of liberality and clear 
conviction. He at once widens the horizon of 
her vision and pours white light on the objects 
already in view. He bears his testimony distinctly for the right 
that lay on the Jewish side of the question. The promises of 
Gocl and the oracles of God were with the Jews. The Samari- 
tans were in the wrong, and held the truth in much corrupt false- 
hood. That is not liberal religion which confounds or abandons 
the distinction between right and wrong. In this question, which 
had gendered so much bigotry, lay a great essential point : the 
Jews founded their religion upon the whole word of God, and 
were therein right ; the Samaritans on only apart of God? 8 word, 
>nich as suited them, and were therein wrong. Both had come to 
regard the outward form as more important than the inner spirit, 
and therein both were wrong. It was, therefore, not a trivial 
question, nor was it of only temporary importance. But Jesus 
brought in a new view, a great, wide, glorious view of the re- 
lationship between God and Man, and of the nature of the wor- 
ship which must be rendered to God. He says with great solem- 
nity, " Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when ye shall 
worship the Father, but not only in this mountain and not only in 
Jerusalem. The hour approaches, and is now present, when the 
real worshippers shall adore the Father inwardly and sincerely : 
for the Father seeks such to adore him." Between these two sen- 
tences he encloses the statement, " Ye worship ye know not what : 
we worship what we know : because salvation is of the Jews." 
The Samaritans had distinctly set aside a portion of God's word, 
the prophetical writings, because they pointed to a Saviour who 
was to spring from the Jews. The latter, of course, accepted them 
theoretically, and were that far right; but practically rejected 
them, and in this were as wrong as the Samaritans. But the 
Jews knew whom they worshipped. Their religion was based 
upon something quite sure, namely, God's promise of a Deliv- 
erer. 

Here is the basis of the religion which Jesus promulgated 
God is Spirit, not a spirit. He is essential Spirit. He is the 
Father. He not only allows but seeks worship. The worship 



FROM JUDAEA TO SAMAEIA. 157 

must be in the inmost spirit. Outward forms are nothing unless 
they be phenomena produced by the motions of 
the noiiinenon^ the expression of spirit through 
matter. God is without material form. The spirit that is in man 
is that which is most like God, and that which touches God. The 
worship God seeks is down below all organism that makes utter- 
ances and gestures. The worship offered him miifil also be per- 
fectly sincere. It can only escape totally all the siniiUer influence 
of mixed motives when offered directly from the set! to God. 
Every discussion of ceremonials and topographies lies outside all 
true religion. The outward modes and the visible places five insig- 
nificant. Ritualism is thoroughly worthless. The Koliest of 
Holies is in the soul of man. There the man is to find nud wor- 
ship God. Then each continent and island is a Holy Lf\\\i 3 and 
each soul the Temple of Jehovah. 

Such was the teaching of Jesus. The woman replied, " These 
matters I do not quite comprehend, but 1 know that Jehovah's 
Anointed is coming, and upon his arrival he 
will expound all these things." Jesus said, " I am ,. .„ , * 
He, now speaking to you." Here is a direct and s i a j 1> 
unequivocal declaration of his Messiahship. He 
had not declared it in Jerusalem, but in Samaria ; not to the 
learned Xicodemus, nor to his own disciples, but to an ignorant 
stranger ; not to any man, but to a woman ; not to a pure and 
cultivated lady, but to a prostitute ! It seems marvellous, a»nd, as 
a policy, wholly inexplicable. 

Hereupon his disciples arrived with the provisions they had 

gone to purchase, and were amazed to see him talking familiarly 

with a woman, yet did not venture to question 

him. In the mean time the woman had left her ,. . . 

disciples. 

water-pot, forgetting her errand, and had re- 
turned to the town and roused her neighbors, exciting them by 
the statement that out by Jacob's Well was sitting a man who 
had told her all her life. Was not this the Messiah, the Christ ? 
Her earnestness brought forth a crowd. 

In the mean time the disciples requested him to eat. But he 
had become so rapt by lofty thought, and so engaged in his ear- 
nest effort to plant the principles of his religion in one soul that al] 
physical appetite failed him. " I have meat to eat that ye know 
not of. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." Look 



158 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

ing up, he saw the field in the beautiful valley, just sown with 
the seed it would require four months to ripen, and he saw at the 
same time the people pouring out, perhaps from their mid-day 
meal, at the invitation of a woman whom they knew to have been 
wicked but now see to be happy. Jesus called their attention to 
these two facts and declared a great spiritual law : " You say that 
now the seed is in the ground men must wait four months for the 
harvest* That is so in the physical world. But in the spiritual 
world there is more rapid ripening. An hour ago I dropped a 
seed of spiritual truth into the heart of a base woman. See how 
it springs to maturity! Look on the spiritual fields. They 
whiten already to the harvest, as the crowd coming across the 
valley from Sychar demonstrates. That shows that the laborers 
in spiritual fields reap rewards as laborers in other fields. You 
have a proverb which is true, ' One sows and another reaps.' I 
am sending you forth to gather a harvest for which you have not 
toiled." 

Upon this the inhabitants of the town arrived. They besought 
him to remain with them, which he did for the 
space of two days, many believing at first from 
what the woman said, and many afterwards from 
hearing the doctrines of Jesus directly from his own lips. 

The Samaritans were in expectation of a Messiah, and while 

their ideas were not those of the Jews upon this subject, they 

were much more definite than the general vague 

Samaritan ideas s\ • ^ i L ^ ji L i • n /n 

f th M " h Oriental expectation or the coming or a vrreat 
One. The Samaritans rejected the prophets but 
held to the law, and seem to have rested their expectations upon 
some vague intimation in the books of Moses, such as the predic- 
tion that Jehovah would raise up a prophet like unto Moses, f 
The fact of the indefiniteness of their grounds of belief left them 
free from the secular notions and rigid pride of the Jews. It 
really seems to have prepared them to look for the Messiah in a 
Moral Reformer rather than in a conquering hero, who should 



Arrivals 
the city. 



from 



* It is proper to say that this may 
allude to some proverbial expression 
among the people, preserved only in this 
place; a proverb appropriate to some 
religious anniversary perhaps connected 
with sowing, when it would be appro- 



priate to say, ' ' We must now wait six 
months for the harvest."* 

f Modern Samaritans refer to such 
passages as Chron. xlix.10 ; Numb. xxiv. 
17, and Deut. xviii. 15. 



FROM JITDMA TO SAMARIA. 



159 



beat all nations under his feet, themselves included. The Mes- 
siah the Jews longed for is precisely the Messiah the Samaritans 
would reject.* They hailed Jesus not as the Saviour of the Jews, 
or of any particular people, but as the Saviour of the world. 



* Milman, in a note, refers to Ber- 
tholdt, chap. vii. , which contains ex- 
tracts from the celebrated Samaritan 
letters and references to the modern 
writers who have discussed them. Ge- 
senius, in a note to the curious Samari- 
tan poems which he has published, says 
that the name of the expected Samari- 



tan Deliverer was to be Husch-hab, o? 
Hat-7iab, which he translates " Conven 
er," one who is to convert the peoxjl^ 
to a higher state of religion. Dr. Rob 
inson says that even to this day the 
Samaritans are looking for the coming 
of the Messiah, under the title of 
d-Muhdy, the Guide 




SAMARITAN PRIEST. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



FKOM SAMARIA TO GAJLILEE. 



On the third day after his interview with the Samaritan woman, 

Jesus went on his way to Galilee. The Galilseans gave him a 

hearty welcome, because of the miracles which 

Matt. iv. ; Mark J - * jll . \ , , . - 

i • Luke iv v • man y °* them had seen him perform. borne 
John iv. have supposed that the fact that he had had no 

reputation among his own people until he had 
made a sensation in the metropolis, and the contrast between the 
treatment he had formerly received in Galilee and that which 
had just been bestowed upon him by the Samaritans, led him to 
quote the proverb, " A prophet hath no honor in his own coun- 
try." But John seems to have meant that Jesus went into Gal- 
ilee to avoid notoriety, because a prophet has little ado made 
over him by his own people. He had moved from his place on 
the Jordan f or this very reason, and he had refused to stay among 
the Samaritans, where he was creating a great sensation. He 
went among his own people feeling perfectly certain that the 
divine power which resided in his teaching would cause it to grow, 
and he preferred to sow the seed where there was no storm of 
popular applause, or even excitement. It was not the utterance 
of disappointed pride, so far as we can discern, but a wise action 
based on a well-known principle. If popularity was what he 
sought, why did he leave Samaria ? 

But many of the Galilseans had witnessed his works at the feast 
in Jerusalem, and learned that he had a metropolitan fame. They 
now received him as a miracle-worker, not as a prophet. 

Then Jesus began to preach. (Matt. iv. 17 ; Mark i. 14, 15.) 
He declared that the time for the fulfilling of the ancient prophe- 
cies had arrived, that the reign of the Messiah, 
b ' the kingdom of God, had begun, and that it was 

proper that they should prepare to enjoy that 
kingdom by an abandonment of their sins. He repeated these 



FBOM SAMARIA TO GALILEE. 



161 



Heals the noble- 
man's son. John 
iv. 46-54. 



sayings, presenting them privately in his intercourse with the peo- 
ple, and urging them publicly in the Jewish chapels of that re- 
gion. John and Jesus equally urged repentance, the former by 
threatenings of wrath and the latter by the attractive persuasive- 
ness of promise. The manner of Jesus won the admiration of 
the people, and his fame grew. (Luke iv. 15.) 

In his circuit of preaching he went to Cana, where he had made 
the water wine, reviving by his presence the remembrance of that 
first and very remarkable miracle. 

While in Cana he received a visit from a nobleman, who was a 
functionary in the court of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, 
or a high military officer. This person was a Jew 
by birth or by conversion. He may have been 
Chuza, Herod's steward (Luke viii. 3), but of this 
we can have no certain knowledge. His resi- 
dence was at Capernaum, on the lake shore, twenty-five miles dis- 
tant from Cana. Learning that the great teacher had returned to 
Galilee, he came to Jesus with the request that he would heal his 
sick son, who was at the point of death. The very name of Cana 
probably reminded him of the wonderful power which Jesus had 
exerted in that town before his departure for Jerusalem. To his 
request Jesus said : " Except ye see signs and miracles ye will not 
believe." 

The words seem merely to indicate a contrast between the read- 
iness with which the Samaritans believed because of his words, 
and received him as a prophet, and the obstinacy of the Jews in 
refusing to believe without a miracle, and not always yielding 
even to such evidence. He may have also alluded to the fact 
that this nobleman had been brought to him not by any necessities 
of his spiritual nature, but because of the sickness of his son. 
Jesus neither made parade of his power to work miracles, nor un- 
dervalued their weight as credentials to his character as a great 
religious reformer. As in other cases (Matt. xv. 27), he may have 
been testing the sincerity of the applicant ; not for any knowl- 
edge he might gain, for no other person ever read character as 
Jesus did, but that the nobleman might discover what was in his 
own heart. 

The distressed parent implores him : " Sir, do come down be- 
fore my boy die." His faith was sound as far as it went, but it 
was narrow. He never had dreamed of any man having power 
11 



162 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

to raise the dead. He even supposed that the presence of the 
Great Worker was necessary. But Jesus said: 
lea " Go, your son lives." He believed. Quietly and 

leisurely he went his way. He could easily have 
reached home at sundown, for it was just one o'clock in the after- 
noon when Jesus spoke those words. He felt so sure that his 
child was safe that he did not return to his residence until next 
day. Then on the way he met his faithful servants, who had 
come out to seek him and to relieve his solicitude. His question 
to them shows that all he had hoped of Jesus was to save his child 
from death and commence a convalescence which should be 
gradual. "When did the child begin to amend?" asked he. 
" He did not begin at all," said they, " but yesterday at one o'clock 
in the afternoon he suddenly recovered; the fever totally left 
him." The unexpected completeness of this recovery and the pre- 
cise correspondence between the language of Jesus and that of 
the servants, and the identity of the hour of the word of Jesus 
and the recovery of the boy, added this nobleman and his whole 
family to the discipleship of Jesus. They not only believed that 
a great miracle had been wrought, but that Jesus was the Messiah. 
If this nobleman was Chuza, Herod's steward, his wife Joanna 
afterward became an ardent supporter of Jesus. (Luke viii. 3.) 

In a missionary circuit which Jesus undertook he came to the 
town of Nazareth, where he had been brought up. His fame as a 
In N z th preacher had preceded him. When the Sabbath 
Luke iv. 16-30. day came he went, as his religious custom had 
been, into the synagogue. The time had come 
when he was to announce himself in his own town and to his own 
people. Many a time had he taken his place of humble silence 
to listen to the reading and exposition of the law and the pro- 
phets. Now the day of his revelation had come. 

The synagogue was a remarkable characteristic of later Juda- 
ism. The Hebrew name, Beth-ha-Cenneseth, meaning House of 
the Congregation, has its equivalent in the Greek 
Sunagoge, which is used in the Septuagint as a 
translation of two Hebrew words, each of which implies a gath- 
ering. A very great antiquity has been claimed for the synagogue 
by Jewish writers, but not on good grounds. There does not 
seem to have been anything in earlier Judaism providing for the 
spiritual edification of the people in public congregations outside 



FROM SAMARIA TO GALILEE. 163 

the Temple service, which, however, was suspended during the 
exile. Then the devout Jews who were cut off from the holy 
city and from the Temple of Jehovah held frequent and, it would 
seem, regular meetings for religious instruction. (Ezek. viii. 1 ; 
xiv. 1 ; xx. 1 ; xxxiii. 31.) " The whole history of Ezra presupposes 
a habit of solemn, probably of periodic meetings." * (Ezra viii. 15 ; 
Ken. viii. 2 ; ix. 1 ; Zech. vii. 5.) In his time the synagogue either 
had its origin, or such distinct revival and organization, that we 
may date the establishment of the synagogue service from his 
period — about b.c. 500. 

Its influence was prodigious. It was church, school-house, lec- 
ture-room, and weekly newspaper. Regular periodical assembling 
for any purpose exerts a silent but powerful influ- 
ence. In this case it embedded the law in the 
minds of the Jews, and bound them together with a band whose 
strength was made manifest in holding them, after the Maccabean 
struggle, to the faith of their fathers, and from the degradation 
of idolatry. It lacked the pomp and splendor of the Temple, but 
it was favorable to simple and hearty devotion. Its very freedom 
from magnificent ceremonial gave scope to the exercise of thought 
and of speech. Its unperceived but certain effect was to destroy 
the power and influence of the hereditary hierarchy, and prepare 
for the bringing in of what Jesus gave, freedom to teach, for any 
one who has the intellectual and moral qualifications. 

In towns where the population allowed a full organization, 
there was a college of " elders " (Luke vii. 3), whose president 
was called the Archisynagogus, Ruler of the 
Synagogue. These elders managed the secular 

J ° ° ° synagogue. 

affairs of the synagogue, and had the power 
of pronouncing excommunication. There was also an officer 
called Sheliach, or Legate, who represented the people, leading 
them in their prayers, etc. He was required to be an adult, 
active, the father of a family, not engaged in secular business, 
not rich, having a good voice, and aptness to teach. There was 
also an officer named the Chazzan (called " the minister" in Luke 
iv. 20), whose duties seemed to be those of a sub-deacon or sexton. 
He took care of the building and prepared it for service, and had 
charge of the sacred furniture. It is believed that during the 

* See Smith's Diet, on " Synagogue," for full account of the institution. 



164: FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IS THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

week he acted as the village schoolmaster. Moreover, there w*»re 
ten men, Batlanim, meaning men of leisure, without whom no 
synagogue was complete. It is difficult to say precisely what 
duties specially devolved upon these. The most probable conjec- 
ture seems to be that as ten was the minimum number for a con- 
gregation, without which number no public service could go for- 
ward, these men were to be always on hand, so that there should 
be no delay, and no single worshipper should be disappointed. 
Perhaps these ten held the several offices of the church. Light- 
foot says that they consisted of the Chazzan, or Minister, whom he. 
makes the same as the Sheliach, or Legate, three Judges, three 
Parnasim (whom he compares with the deacons of the early 
church, whose business was to attend to the alms), the Targumist 
or Interpreter, the Schoolmaster and his Assistant. This classifi 
cation, however, seems purely conjectural. 

The service of the synagogue was much less stately than that 
of the Temple, but there was a regularly appointed series of les- 
sons out of the law and the prophets, and there 

The service of ^ -. , . , . . -,, -, t 

«,<* c.™„^™ «. was also a ritual which was rigidly observed. 

tne synagogue. t> J 

The ritualistic controversy raged at times in the 
Jewish Church, and continued after the days of Jesus. We learn 
that one Eliezer of Lydda, about the close of the first century, 
set forth that the Legatus of the synagogue should discard the 
fixed prayers, doxologies, and benedictions, and pray as his heart 
prompted him. This suggestion was a sin greater than an ordi- 
nary immorality. He was never forgiven, but died in Cesarea an 
excommunicated man. The Jews of that day, it appears, had no 
more sense or piety than some baptized Christians of our own 
times. The first lesson was from the law and the second from 
the prophets, and then followed a discourse, expository or hor- 
tatory, somewhat like our modern sermon. It is called by the 
writer of the Acts (xiii. 15) the " word of exhortation." It 
appears that whoever had a word to say took that occasion to 
utter it. And so from synagogue to church the form of popular 
address has been transferred, and by Christianity been rendered 
a power in civilization in propagating opinions and sentiments. 
When a member of the synagogue wished to speak, he stood up 
to signify that desire. 

For the first time then, upon coming back to his own town, 
when the Sabbath arrived, Jesus entered the familiar place of 



FEOM SAMATJIA TO GALILEE. 



165 



woi6hip, and stood up to read. The President caused the roll 
of the Prophets to be handed him, and he turned 

i j. j/l • a. j i £ i.i j Jesus reads from 

perhaps to the appointed lesson tor the day, per- T . 
haps to what came under his eye as the roll 
unfurled. It was what in our version is Isaiah lxi. 1, 2. He 
read : "The Spirit of Jehovah is on me : because Jehovah has 
anointed me. To briny good tidings to the humble has he sent 
me / to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim to the captives 
freedom, and to the bounden perfect liberty : to proclaim the 
year of favor with Jehovah" * He sat down. All e} r es must 
have been riveted on him. He opened his exposition with the 
deliberate and solemn announcement of himself as the expected 
Messiah, in the words, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your 
ears." They all knew that the passage stood in the middle of 
the third great division of the book of Isaiah, that which they 
always considered as predicting the person, the offices, and the 
triumphs of the Messiah. That made the announcement all the 
more impressive. In words of hearty and moving eloquence 
Jesus proceeded to expound Isaiah. " Gracious words," says the 
historian, " proceeded out of his month." 

As he pressed his doctrine of universal charity upon them, a 
kingdom not restrained by Jewish limits and bearing no vengeance 
against other peoples, their old traditional preju- 

,. , , -i i mi -n , i i • Jesus shocks their 

dices began to be excited. I hey recollected his . . ,. 
obscure origin. They said among themselves, " Is 
not this the son of Joseph ?" As if they had said, Is not this a 
most pretentious thing in so young and unknown a man ? Jesus 
perceived their captiousness and said, "You will by all means 
scornfully apply to me the proverb, Physician, heal thyself de- 
manding me to do in my own country what you have heard that 
I have done in Capernaum. I reply with another proverb, JVo 
prophet is accepted in his own country. In coming among you 



* This gives the words as they stand 
in the original, in a translation as near- 
ly literal as practicable. The historian 
Luke varies the passage a little. Pro- 
bably he quoted from memory from the 
Septuagint, and so gives ' ' recovering of 
eight to the blind " as a translation for 
w the opening of the prison to them that 
ore bound," and inserts after it, ' ' to set 



at liberty them that are bound," appar- 
ently taken from the Septuagint version 
of "let the oppressed go free," in Isa. 
lviii. 6, as if to complete the sense (See 
note, Strong's Harmony.) The phrase, 
" and to the bounden perfect liberty," ia 
still more strictly literally " open open- 
ing," which may mean of eyes or of 
prison-doors. (See Alexander, in loco.) 



166 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



I knew that I should encounter the ordinary prejudice against 
every great moral teacher which exists in the minds of his own 
people, who have known him in childhood and amid ordinary 
secular employments. I refuse to perform miracles at your dicta- 
tion. I recall for your instruction some passages in the history 
of the two greatest of the earlier prophets, showing that God's 
grace has gone over to strangers who had not the advantage of 
intimacy with the oracles of God such as you possess, and that 
God distributes his favors freely and will not have them extorted. 
In the days of Elijah, when the heavens dropped no rain for the 
space of three years and six months, when a great famine was 
throughout the land, the prophet was sent to none of the many 
suffering widows of Israel, but to a Gentile widow in Zarephath, 
a town of the Phoenicians. Again, when Elisha was discharging 
the functions of a prophet there were many lepers in Israel, but 
he cured none but Naaman, a foreigner, a Syrian general. And 
thus the history of the prophets shows that God causes miracles 
according to His sovereign will and wisdom, and bestows such 
blessings where they will be appreciated." 

This whole speech was construed by his hearers into a reproach 
for their un worthiness. They had always suffered under the 

stigma which rested upon their town. It had 
from Nazareth. P asse d into an adage that " No good comes out 

of Nazareth." He might redeem them. But 
now he seems unpatriotically to prefer Gentiles to his own people. 
They became enraged, and thus proved their unworthiness of 
him. Their frenzy grew to such a pitch that they took this elo- 
quent preacher, who had gone about the country finding welcome 
in all the synagogues, and led him to a precipitous place on the 
range of hills on which Nazareth stands, intending to cast him 
headlong down.* But Jesus, how we do not know, passed through 
the midst of them and went away. There seems to have been no 
miracle here, no rendering of himself invisible, no striking his per- 



* " Most readers probably imagine a 
town built on the summit of a mountain, 
from which summit the intended pre- 
cipitation was to take place. This is 
not the situation of Nazareth. Yet its 
position is still in accordance with the 
narrative. It is built ( upon,' that is, 
on the side of 'a mountain,' but the 



brow is not beneath but over the town, 
and such a cliff as is here implied is to 
be found, as all modern travellers de- 
scribe, in the abrupt face of limestone 
rock, about thirty or forty feet high, 
overhanging the Maronite convent at 
the south-west corner of the town.' ; 
Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 359. 



FEOM SAMATCLA TO GALILEE. 



167 



Becntors blind, nor any " slipping away," taking advantage of 

narrow streets or tortuous ways. There was something in him 

which seemed to overawe or overpower them. He " passed through 

the midst of them," is the historian's statement. Perhaps, as 

Stier suggests, there came such an appearance of majesty upon 

him, that the crowd began to dispart and give way right and left, 

as he moved along. Pf eninger graphically says : " They stood 

— stopped — inquired — were ashamed — separated — fled ! " 

Upon quitting Nazareth after the bad treatment he had received 

from his townsmen, Jesus went to Capernaum, and thereafter 

made that place his head-quarters. 

The name Capernaum signifies, according to a e f. ape *" 

. naum Jus head- 

some authorities, " the Village of Kahum," accord- q uar ters. 

ing to others, " the Tillage of Consolation." As 
we follow the history of Jesus we shall discover that many of his 
mighty works were wrought, and many of his most impressive 
words were spoken in Capernaum. The infidelity of the inhabi- 
tants, after all the discourses and wonderful works which he had 
done among them, brought out the saying of Jesus, " And thou, 
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven shalt be cast down 
to hell." (Matt. xi. 23.) So thoroughly has this prediction been 
fulfilled that no trace of the city remains, and the very site which 
it occupied is now a matter of conjecture, there being even no 
ecclesiastical tradition of the locality. At the present day two 
spots have claims which are urged, each with such arguments of 
probability as to make the whole question the most difficult in 
sacred topography. Those who desire to examine the relative 
claims may consult the references given in the note below.* We 
shall probably never be able to know the exact fact. Jesus damn- 
ed it to oblivion, and there it lies. We shall content ourselves 
with the New Testament notices as bearing on the work of Jesus. 
We learn that it was somewhere on the borders of Zebulun and 
Naphtali, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. (Compare 
Matt. iv. 13, with John vi. 24.) It was near or 
i n " the land of Gennesaret" (compare Matt. xiv. Capernaum 
34, with John vi. 17, 21, 24), a plain about three 
miles long and one mile wide, which we learn from Josephus was 



* See Kobinson's Bibl. Researches, iii. 
288-294 ; new edition, iii. 348 ; Bonar, 
p. 437-41 ; Thomson, Land and Book, 



i. 542 ; Wilson, Lands of the Bible, ii. 
139-149 ; Biblioth. Sacra, April, 1855, p. 
162. 



168 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

one of the most prosperous and crowded districts of Palestine. 
It was probably on the great road leading from Damascus to the 
south, " by the way of the sea." (Matt. iv. 15.) There was great 
wisdom in selecting this as a place to open a great public ministry. 
It was full of a busy population. The exceeding richness of the 




TELL ET7M RUIN& 



wonderful plain of Gennesaret supported the mass of inhabi- 
tants it attracted. Josephus (B. J., iii. x. 3) gives a glowing de- 
scription of this land. He says that the soil was so fruitful that 
all sorts of trees could grow upon it ; that the air was so mixed as 
to nourish the walnut, which requires the cold, as well as the palm- 
tree, which demands the heat. " One may call this place the 
ambition of nature," because it forces those trees to grow together 
which are natural enemies. It afforded, to his fancy, a happy 
contention of the seasons, as if each claimed the land for its own. 
He gives a luscious picture of the fruitage, and the natural foun- 
tains. He says that the people thought the fountain Caphar- 
naum to be a vein of the Nile, "because it produced fishes like 
a Corbe bred in a lake near Alexandria." In modern times 
Professor Stanley, of the University of Oxford, gives quite as 



FROM SAMARIA TO GALILEE. 169 

glowing a description of this plain. (See Sinai and Palestine, p. 
365, et seq.) 

Such was the region in which was located Jesus's new centra 
of activity. From Capernaum, by land, he could command large 
portions of Galilee ; by boats he could cross from 
west to east, from north to south, from the juris- ssurroun m S 3 - 
diction of one prince to that of another. He was where the 
fisheries made life on the lake and the shore ; where pleasure pa- 
laces brought the gay and the rich ; where warm springs attracted 
opulent invalids; where the great thoroughfare from Babylon and 
Damascus brought companies of travelling merchants into Pales- 
tine ; where royalty attracted officials and dignitaries ; where gar- 
risons established to give dignity to sovereignty, or to suppress the 
neighboring turbulent Galilean peasantry, brought military com- 
manders and troops of common soldiers ; where trade and traffic 
on a frontier established custom-houses, and where a land of exu- 
berant fertility made agricultural products abundant and stimu- 
lated the activities of the people. So many foreigners, for busi- 
ness or for pleasure, had fixed their residence in this vicinity that 
it acquired the name of " Galilee of the Gentiles" The lake of 
Galilee was the Como of Syria ; for the Herodian family, famous 
for love of magnificent architecture, had made a portion of its 
shore splendid with the palaces which mingled with the synagogues 
of all the line of cities and villages which overlooked the sea. 
There were work, pleasure, life, and energy, all around the new 
teacher. Here he found congregations and helpers, friends and 
disciples, and the people, who, moving all about, with almost the 
restlessness which characterizes modern times, were ready to pro- 
pagate his fame and attract other hearers to his teaching. He 
went into the very thick of life. His seasons of long solitude 
were over. His time had arrived to exert all the moral force he 
had been accumulating in study and prayer. He went among 
the people who were working and toiling with their hands, know- 
ing that they were ordinarily the people whose brains were active. 
He had a powerful friend in the nobleman whose son he had 
healed, a man who was probably of Herod's household. So there, 
where sea and mount and desert met, Jesus broke upon Galilee, 
a light whose rays were to reach every nook and corner of the 
globe, and illuminate the pathway of thought and sentiment down 
all the succeeding centuries. 



170 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

Soon after his arrival at Capernaum, one day as Jesus walked 

beside the Lake of Gennesaret, perhaps a little south of the 

town, he came upon Simon, called Peter, and his 
Jesus preaches , ,-, A -. . ■, -, -, 

. , . brother Andrew, feimon, as we have already 

from a boat. ' J 

learned, had met Jesus on the banks of the 
Jordan. As Jesus walked out of the town the people began to 
gather about him and accompany him, to hear other gracious 
words from his lips, and to witness other great works from his 
hands. There were two fishing-boats at the shore. The fishermen 
had gone to wash their nets. But the owner of one of them was 
Simon Peter, who, at the request of Jesus, pushed it from the 
shore a distance sufficient to preserve the attractive preacher from 
the pressure of the crowd, and yet not so far as to make it incon- 
venient for the people to hear. And from this floating pulpit 
Jesus delivered a discourse on the doctrines of the religion he 
had come to propagate. 

At the conclusion of the discourse he directed Simon to 

launch out to a deeper place in the lake and let down his net for 

fish, for Jesus would not use any man's time or 

e won e u ^^ ^^o^ rewarding him. Simon told him 
draught of fishes. ° 

that all night they had toiled and no fish had 

been caught. But there was something so commanding and 

inspiring in the words of Jesus that Simon immediately added, 

" Nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the net." So he called 

his brother Andrew, and the net was lowered ; and so great was the 

number of the fish enclosed that the net began to break : and they 

called for their partners, James and John, the two sons of Zebe- 

dee, to come and help them ; and so great was the haul that both 

ships came near sinking with the weight. 

"When Simon (Peter) saw this wonder he fell at the feet of 

Jesus with mingled adoration and supplication. The rapidity of 

discernment and depth of feeling which we shall 
T e e ect on ^^ ^ -^ cnarac teristic of this energetic man 

come out m this passage. Ihere was some power 
in this new teacher which was not human : Peter believed it to 
be divine. He was a rough, profane man, but he had that sense 
of contrast between purity and sinfulness which is not the mark 
of a degraded mind, but rather of a spirit that has not lost its 
moral sensitiveness. " My Lord, be pleased to leave my ship, for 
I am not saintly enough to endure thine august presence of holy 



FEOM SAMATCTA TO GALILEE. 171 

power ! " That seemed to be the tenor of his address. " Be not 
afraid," said Jesus ; " for from this time thou shalt catch men." 
A call to discipleship had been already made, after which Peter 
had gone home to his work. Now, Jesus gives him a deepei 
intimation of his intention to attach him strongly to his service, 
and gives an increase to his faith by the great wonder he beheld, 
and exhilarates him by a figure taken from his own pursuits. If 
to bring so great a haul of fish to land be joy, what rapture must 
it not be to " catch men ! " Hereafter emperors and kings and 
queens and philosophers and scholars and poets and merchant- 
princes shall be in the net which these simple Galilsean fishermen 
were to let down into the deep waters of the lake of human life. 

So they brought their fish to land, drew up their boats upon 
the shore, and abandoned boats and nets that they might follow 
this wonderful Being. Going along the shore 
they found their partners, James and John, the f „ T 
sons of Zebedee, who, while this profound con- 
versation was going on between Jesus and Simon and Andrew, 
had betaken themselves to repairing their own nets. It would 
seem that when called by Simon and Andrew to render help, 
they had put their own net under the overburdened net of their 
partners, to prevent the escape of the fish and the increase of the 
rent, and that thus their own net had become damaged. The invi- 
tation he had given Simon and Andrew, Jesus extended to James 
and John, and they left the implements of their business with their 
father and the servants, and obeyed the call to a higher work. 



CHAPTEK V. 



DEMONIACS. 



On the Sabbath following his return to Capernaum Jesus went 

with his disciples to the service of the synagogue, and, according 

to his custom, expounded the Holy Scriptures. 

^k^i ' ^^ There seems t0 nave been g reat simplicity in his 
mode of treating all subjects, but it is remarked 
on this occasion that there was an element in his method which 
not only interested but astonished his audience. He spoke on the 
most profound and important subjects, not as one discussing them, 
showing what can be said on both sides, nor as one striving merely 
to stimulate the intellects of his hearers, nor as a learned man, 
reporting the results of the researches of the best minds, but de- 
cisively, with authority, as declaring truths which were not to be 
questioned, with an authority from which there was no appeal, 
and with a spirit full of power. The contrast which this afforded 
with the pedantry, the pretence, the sophistry, and the quibbling 
of the scribes, made Jesus notable. 

On this particular Sabbath there came into the synagogue a 

person described by Mark (i. 23) as " a man with an unclean 

spirit," by Luke (iv. 33) as "a man which had a 

man wi g -^ f an unc ] ean devil." Combining the nar- 
an unclean spirit. c ° 

ratives of these two historians, we have the fol- 
lowing account : The man cried out, "Ah! what to us and to thee, 
Jesus the Nazarene % Hast thou come to destroy us % I know thee 
who thou art, the Holy of God." Jesus spoke sharply to him and 
said: "Be silent and leave him." Then the "devil," or "unclean 
spirit," threw him down, tore him, howled, and left him. And 
the people were astonished, and questioned among themselves and 
said, " What thing is this % what new doctrine is this ? for with 
authority and power he commands even the unclean spirits, and 
they obey him." This occurrence greatly and rapidly increased 



DEMONIACS. 



173 



the fame of Jesus through all Galilee, for then, as now, a crazy 
man was an object of general notice. 

It brings ns at once to the consideration of the perplexing qnes 
tion of what is ordinarily called demoniacal possession. 

In examining this subject we have the disadvantage of not hav 
ing in our own times anything that quite corresponds with this 
remarkable class of phenomena, or which is recognized as falling 
into this category of maladies. We are remitted to the ancient 
writers, and must learn what we can gather from the notices in 
the classical authors and New-Testament historians. So far as 
the latter are concerned, it is to be noticed that the word used by 
them in reference to all these cases is one which does not mean 
the Devil, Satan, but demons. The classical writers, except when 
they indicate by a special epithet the contrary, used the word 
as describing good-natured, or at least not malevolent beings ; but 
the New-Testament writers, on the supposition that they meant 
beings distinct from the afflicted individuals, invariably repre- 
sent them as sinister or positively malevolent. The 
classical writers sometimes loosely employed the 
word to mean any spiritual existences out of man, 
from the spirits of the departed up to the ^Supreme Being, the 
Father of the gods ; but when they pretended to be precise they 
described them as intermediate beings between man and the gods. 
Plato says : "Every demon is a middle being between God and mor- 
tal." He further says, that " Demons are reporters and carriers from 
men to the gods, and again from the Is to men, of the suppli- 
cations and prayers of the one and of - injunctions and rewards 
of devotion from the other." * There were two kinds of demons. 
The souls of good men after their departure were called heroes, 
and raised to the dignity of demons ; \ and there were also sup- 
posed to be demons who had never inhabited a mortal body 4 
Philo§ says that the ancients held souls, demons, and angels as the 
same. The demons who had once been in human bodies became 
objects of worship among the heathen, and Jehovah is so often 
called " the living God" to distinguish Him from these.) 



The classical 
authorities. 



* Plato, Sympos. , pp. 202, 203. 

\ Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. , and 
Plato, Cratylus. 

X Plato, Tim n and Apuleius, De Deo 
Socratis. 



% Philo, De Gigantibus. 
| Deut. xxvi 14 ; Ps. cvi 
viii. 19; Deut. v. 26. 



Isaiah 



174 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVEB IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



The Jewish 
opinions. 



The New-Testa- 
ment writers. 



Josephus * incidentally gives us his opinion, and we su] pose 
the opinion commonly entertained by his countrymen, of demons, 
who, he says, " are the spirits of wicked men that 
enter into the bodies of the living and kill them 
if they do not obtain help." 
The New-Testament historians seem to give the impression that 
they believed in the existence of separate spirits, for they call 
them irvevfiara y \ who were intelligent,^: power- 
ful^ evil,|| and unclean.^" Whether they held the 
opinion of Josephus, that they were the spirits of 
wicked men who after death entered the bodies of the living to 
torment them, or used the word in the sense of the classical 
authors, is a question we must examine in the light of all that is 
said by these historians in their narratives of cases of apparent 
demoniacal possession. In regard to those possessions there are 
two theories, which may be stated with their reasons in advance, 
and we shall see how far each accounts for the phenomena re- 
corded in the biographies of Jesus which we possess. We are to 
ascertain what was the opinion held by Jesus and the New-Testa- 
ment historians. 

It is held by some that Jesus and the writers severally called 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, believed that demoniacs were 
persons into whom evil spirits had entered, who- 
ever those spirits were, but generally supposed to 
be devils, Satan's angels, who held or possessed the demoniac, 
using his body for their evil purposes. The reasons assigned for 
this opinion are these : 

1. The demoniacs beseech Jesus not to torment them ; they ask 
and answer questions in a rational manner ; they are said to leave 
men and enter swine, etc. 

2. Physical diseases are mentioned of those possessed with dev • 
ils, where no mental ailment is suggested, as in Matt. ix. 32, where 
it is said that " they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a 
devil;" and as in Matt. xii. 22,." one possessed with a devil, blind 
and dumb." 

3. In the case of the youth described in Luke ix. 39, the symp- 



* Wovrs of the Jews, vii. 6, § 3. 
f Compare Matt. viii. 16 ; x. 1 ; Mark 
ix. 20 ; Luke x. 20. 

{Mark! 24; Luke iv. 34 



§ Matt. viii. 28-32 ; Mark ix. 
| Matt. xii. 45. 
1 Matt. x. 1. 



DEMONIACS. 175 

toms are those of epilepsy ; but the father assigns them to the in 
fluence of a demon, and Jesus and his disciples say nothing tc 
contradict this theory. 

4. The demoniacs professed that they were possessed of de- 
mons, as in Mark v. 9, and the same was asserted by their nearest 
relatives, as in Matt. xv. 22, and Mark ix. 17. 

5. The writers of the New-Testament histories observe a dis- 
tinction between those who were diseased and those who were 
possessed. In Mark i. 32 it is recorded : " They brought unto him 
all that were diseased, and them that were possessed of devils." 
The same distinction is in the passage in Luke vi. 17, 18. It is 
said that Jesns himself maintains the distinction in a very marked 
manner in his commission to his disciples, recorded in Matt. x. 8 : 
"Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." 

6. The demoniacs knew Jesus to be the Son of God and the 
Christ, as we learn from Matt. viii. 29, Mark i. 24, and Luke 
iv. 41 ; and Jesus forbade them from proclaiming him as the 
Messiah. 

7. There are at least live cases in which Jesus seems to address 
demons as existences separate from the persons afflicted. These 
are recorded severally in Mark i. 25 ; v. IS ; Luke iv. 35 ; Matt. 
viii. 32, and Mark ix. 25. In the first case Jesus bids the demons 
be silent, and in the last to enter no more into the person who 
had been possessed. 

8. Jesus connects Satan with the demons ; as when the seventy 
returned from their mission and reported that even the demons 
were subject to them through the name of Jesu?, lie replied (Luke 
x. 18) : "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." It is 
also observed that in Matt. xii. 25, Jesus replies to the suggestion 
of his enemies that he was casting out devils by Beelzebub, the 
prince of the devils, with the argument that Satan cannot be di- 
vided against Satan, else his kingdom would not stand. It may 
be added, that the woman who had a spirit of infirmity is repre- 
sented by Jesus to have been bound by Satan. (Luke xiii. 11, 16.) 

9. In Matt. xii. (43 et seq.) Jesus speaks of an unclean spirit 
going out of a man, and the man afterwards taking seven other 
spirits ; and in Matt. xvii. 21, he says : " This kind goeth not out 
but by prayer and fasting ; " which seem like facts in their nat- 
ural history. 

10. Finally, it is contended that it detracts from the dignity of 



176 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER m THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

the miracles of Jesus to suppose that he only healed diseases, the 

casting out of devils being supposed a greater display of divine 

power. 

The opposing theory is that in reality there never was such a 

fact as a demon or evil spirit, whether formerly in human flesh 

_, . or always a separate existence, taking possession 

The opposing J r . I i V 

the oi a man and having such control over him as to 

be able to torment and destroy him ; that all the 
recorded cases are of persons miserably diseased in mind or body, 
or both, and that because the phenomena were inexplicable the 
popular mind assigned them to the influence of demons ; and that 
Jesus, in order to be understood by his contemporaries, adopted the 
usual forms of expression as most readily indicating this special 
class of diseases. It is further contended that whereas all parties 
agree that, so far as appears in the records, whatever the possessed 
did cannot be distinguished from the acts of the demon, the in- 
quiry is reduced to the simple question, Can these phenomena be 
accounted for without recourse to the supernatural ? ~No devout 
scholar hesitates to accept the theory of the supernatural when 
necessary ; but equally does he never resort to it to explain what 
is readily explicable by well-known physical or psychological 
laws ; and all the phenomena correspond with what we know of 
hypochondria, epilepsy, and insanity; that the New-Testament 
historians give as plain intimations as we could demand that they 
were employing popular phraseology, and not in these cases giv- 
ing utterance to doctrines or asserting facts ; and that the doc- 
trine of the agency of departed spirits upon the bodies of men 
is contrary to other doctrines expressly taught by Jesus. 

Those who hold this theory, in reply to the arguments cited 
above by the advocates of real demoniac possession, say : 

1. These insane people believed themselves possessed. They 
had been brought up in a community holding that doctrine, and 
in their raving made utterances consistent with their crazy view 
of their own cases, a thing we frequently meet in our modern 
asylums for the insane. Locke's description of madmen {Essay 
on Human Understanding, chap. ii. 11, 13) is, that " they reason 
right on false principles, and taking their fancies for realities, 
make right deductions from them." 

2. The demoniacs at Gadara (Mark and Luke speak of only 
one) had the fantasy that they were possessed by innumerable 



DEMONIACS. 171 

devils, and so when Jesus asked the name * it was given as 
" Legion," and the possessed men, believing themselves speaking 
for the demons, begged that they should not be driven out of 
the country, but allowed to enter into the swine, and that when 
Jesus flung the disease from the man or men to the hogs, it was as 
great a miracle as any casting out of demons would have been.f 
Actual demons would not have chosen to go into the swine. And 
it is specially remarked that Luke, who was a physician, speaks 
of this demoniac, upon his recovery, as being in his right mind. 
In the case of the blind and dumb, or simply dumb, the disease? 
in the organs was popularly ascribed to demons. In Matt. ix. 32 
the historian specifically mentions that the man, not the demon, 
was dumb. 

3. The fact that the father of the epileptic youth (in Luke ix. 
39) assigned his trouble to a demon, shows only that it was his 
opinion, in which he participated in a popular superstition. 

4. If this argument is good here, it is valid as establishing witch- 
craft, as many have professed to be bewitched, and some have con- 
fessed that they practised this black art. But who now believes them 1 

5. It is doubted whether the New-Testament historians made a 
distinction between the sick and the demoniacs, and it is held that 
they spoke of demoniacs as only one kind of sick persons. In 
Matt. iv. 24 are three kinds of ailments mentioned, those possessed 
of demons, those who were lunatic, and those who were palsied, 
all coming under the general description " divers diseases." Oc- 
casionally demoniacs are omitted in the general recital of miracu- 
lous cures, as in the notable reply of Jesus to John, in Matt. xi. 5, 
in which an account is given of miraculous evidences attending 
the ministry of Jesus. If these demoniacs were not merely a 
class of sick people, would not Jesus have brought forward their 
cure with great emphasis ? 

6. It is alleged that it does not appear that all the demons knew 
Jesus. That some of these insane people did recognize Jesus and 
call him by high and holy names is not to be wondered at when 
we recollect how his person was coming to be known, and what 
great things were notoriously done by him every day. 



* It really is quite noticeable that in 
the original,, in Mark v. 9, it is said, xai 
enrtpwra avroi-, he asked the man, not avro 1 
the demon. 

12 



f It is paralleled by the transference 
of the leprosy from Naaman to Gehazi, 
in 2 Kings v. 27. 



178 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESTJb. 

7. The supposed addresses of Jesus to the demons may be easily 
understood to be, first, an accommodation to the fancy of the de- 
ranged persons, and, secondly, to the understanding of spectators. 
His bidding the demon depart, and no more enter the man, is of a 
piece with his bidding the fever leave a patient, which he did in 
the case of Peter's mother-in-law. 

8. In regard to the mention of Satan by Jesus, in connection 
with demons, it is urged that the saying, " I beheld Satan as light- 
ning fall from the heavens " (Luke x. 18), cannot be taken liter- 
ally except as referring to his original expulsion from heaven. In 
that case it would be wholly irrelevant. The choice is then left 
among the various figurative interpretations. Satan is a name 
given to anything inimical to what is good. Jesus meant, it 
is said, that he had foreseen the glorious triumphs of his disci- 
ples over the most formidable obstacles. And as to his argument 
with his enemies, he simply took them upon their own grounds, 
and, not affirming those grounds solid, showed that, even presum- 
ing them so, there was no place for their objection to him : so that 
nothing can be inferred from that. 

9. In the case of the man who took to himself seven other 
spirits, it is a mere illustration, taken as public speakers frequently 
do take such, from the popular beliefs, as one might illustrate a 
principle by reference to a well-known fairy story, without in- 
dorsing it. 

10. That no detraction is made from the dignity of Jesus ; for 
those who hold this view, quite equally with their opponents, be- 
lieve in the divine power of Jesus, and that it was quite as great a 
miracle to restore an insane man instantaneously to reason, and 
rectify the shocks his mind had received, as it would have been 
to cast out from the body of a man the wicked spirit of some 
dead man who had come to torment and destroy him. 

Perhaps the strongest thing that can be said on the other side 

is this : That while a perfectly truthful person may accommodate 

himself to popular fancies and phrases under cir- 
Strong- argument x * , , J- , . , 

for first theory cumstances which do not confirm hurtful error, 

nor misrepresent his own beliefs, — as a scientific 

man of to-day may speak of the rising and the setting of the sun, 

and call deranged men lunatics, although he does not believe that 

the sun moves round the earth nor that mental ailments are caused 

by the moon, — yet no truthful man would always speak as if he 



DEMONIACS. 



179 



adopted a theory which he really believed to be false, and knew to 
be injurious, which is the case with this theory of demoniacal pos- 
session. If untrue, it was a very hurtful superstition, and a great 
and good teacher would not have countenanced it. 

I think that a critical examination of all that is said in the New 
Testament on this subject will probably lead most candid readers 
to the conclusion that a distinction is made be- 
tween those who suffered merely from physical t h e0 ry. 
ailments and those who are represented as demo- 
niacs. In the latter case the patients seem to have psychical ail- 
ments which came from physical disorders. They are troubled 
by a sense of double consciousness, and distracted by what seems 
a double will. If paralytics or those who suffer neuralgias have 
their pains from physical causes, and lunatics theirs from mental 
disorders, it is merely in accordance with analogy that we sup- 
pose there are those whose miseries arise from psychical derange- 
ments, soul-disorders. If the atmosphere act on the body, and 
one mind on another, why should not one spirit on another spirit % 
And this seems to have been the case with demoniacs.* 

We return now to the demoniac in the synagogue of Caper- 
naum. His symptoms are such as we now see in persons who are 

known to be insane. His insanity was by his coun- 

, , J , pi * , ^ Demoniac cured 

trymen traced to the agency of a demon. As the m the synagogue . 
insane are often strangely moved by the presence, 
the voice, and the words of certain persons, so was this man 
moved by the intonations and language of Jesus. Believing him- 
self possessed of many devils, he suddenly lost his self-control and 
gave vent to such a shriek of rage and fear as such beings would 
be supposed to utter under the circumstances, crying out at first 
inarticulately, and then making an appeal to Jesus, and then call- 
ing him "the Holy One of God." On the theory of demons, they 
recognized the holiness of Jesus and his powerful influence, and 
thus in a paroxysm of rage gave their testimony to him. He de- 
clined it, but said : " Hold thy peace and come out of him." We 
see in our lunatic asylums men who are terribly afflicted with 
moral insanity, as we call it, showing all these symptoms. In the 



* If the reader wish to investigate this 
subject further, he is referred to Trench 
on Miracles, the chapter on " The De- 
moniacs in the Country of the Gada- 



renes ; " to Farmer's Essay on tlie De- 
moniacs of the New Testament; and 
Kitto's Cyclopcedia, Art. " Demoniacs. M 



180 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



days of Jesus they would have been said to be possessed with an 
unclean spirit, or demon. In all ages, until the tender and wise 
teachings of Jesus began to prevail in the world, such people were 
objects of dread, and were cut off from the kind offices of soci- 
ety. Jesus treated the case differently. He pitied. In his own 
name and by his own authority he pronounced a command, which 
was followed by a shriek, and the maniac passed through a con- 
vulsion into health and peace. The assembled people were aston- 
ished and delighted. The synagogue broke up, and men wenl 
away wondering and praising. 




SCBIBES AND 



CHAPTEK VI. 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE, 



Upon leaving the synagogue Jesus went to the house of SimoL 
Peter, who was a married man.* His wife's mother lay ill of a 
fever. The marshes about Capernaum bred ma- 
larious diseases, which specially manifested them- Capernaum. Je- 

. -i • o • i sus heals Simon's 

selves m the autumn and winter, sometimes they ^^g mo ther 

were light intermittent, arid sometimes violent 
fevers. Luke, who was a physician, seems to designate the dis- 
ease in this case as being of the more violent kind.f Peter and 
his brother Andrew had witnessed the miraculous cure of the 
demoniac in the synagogue, and besought Jesus to heal the sick 
woman He came and stood over her, and took her hands, and in 
the poetic language applied to the cure of demoniacs and to the 
stilling of the waves, he "rebuked the fever," $ and it left her in- 
stantly. She did not convalesce. She was immediately and totally 
whole. She did not pass through a season of weakness. She 
came back at once to strength, and rose and discharged her house- 
hold duties by providing a meal for her guests. It was a festive 
day for them. t 

This miracle and that in the synagogue made Jesus famous in 
Capernaum. Before the setting of the sun, probably accounts of 
these wonders had been rendered in every house in the city, and 



* And we learn from 1 Cor. ix. 5, that 
his married state continued through his 
apostolic ministry. He was much more 
fortunate than Paul. 

f It is not certain that Luke intended 
to make the distinction between the dif- 
ferent kinds of fever, as Alford inti- 
mates that he does. If he had so in- 
tended would the article have been 
omitted in Luke iv. 38. where it is sim- 
ply nvpcToi jxtyays, ? It being a violent 



fever is sufficient to make this a remark- 
able miracle. 

% It is to be noticed that Jesus treated 
disease as a hostile potency, to be " re- 
buked" and to be resisted, as though 
sickness were somehow akin to sin. 
Early commentators, among them Cyril 
of Alexandria, noticed the peculiar ex- 
pression in the original Greek as some- 
how conveying this idea. 



182 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVEK IN THE MFE OF JESUS. 

the hearts of the people were thrilling with the thought that 

so marvellous a personage was residing in theii 

Crowds of sick midst It was the SabbatL The str i c tness of 

Jewish observance of that day is known. It has 
been illustrated by divers incidents in the history of the people, 
but by none perhaps so strikingly as the fact that in the Maeca- 
bean revolt against Antiochus the insurgents, who had been sur- 
prised on the Sabbath, tamely submitted to butchery rather than 
violate the sanctity of the day by defensive warfare.* But the 
Sabbath ended with the sunset. Admiration brought crowds to 
Peter's house, and many who were diseased came or were brought 
by their friends. The lame hobbled towards the Healer, and the 
blind came groping, and the palsied came trembling, and the epi- 
leptic brought his mysterious malady, and even " the possessed " 
were present. The streets about the house were so crowded that 
Peter felt that " all the city was gathered together at the door." 
(Mark i. 33.) And none went away unblessed. He laid his hands 
on all. The palsy-stricken, the man with the epilepsy, the suf- 
ferers from chronic neuralgias, felt instant ease, refreshment, and 
health infused into all parts of their bodies ; the deaf instantly 
heard the exclamations of the demoniacs amidst the shouts of the 
healed, the praises of the disciples, and the murmur of the popu- 
lace ; and through them all, like music through a storm, swept the 
voice of Jesus, with all authority and sweetness, silencing demo- 
niacs and rebuking disease, while eyes that had been long blind 
looked for the first time upon the faces of their friends, upon the 
multitude, and upon Jesus, as he stood in the foreground of a 
soft Syrian sunset. 

Virtue went out of him as it entered all these. He became ex- 
hausted and nervous and faint. (Mark i. 35.) And when the 
time for bed had arrived, after this wonderful 

Exhausting ef- Sabbath j esus cou]d not s i eep . He rose in the 

fects on Jesus. . 7 . x 

night and went out into a solitary place that he 
might pray. When the day had come, Peter and they that were 
with him sought Jesus, and told him what an excitement his deeds 
had created among the people, and urged him to stay in the city 
and go amongst those who so earnestly sought him. His reply 
was, " Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach the king- 

* See Milman's Christianity, i 211. 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 183 

dom of God there also ; for therefore came I forth." Then com- 
menced his first circuit of missionary preaching. 

The earnest teacher " went about all Galilee," as Matthew says, 
meaning probably Upper Galilee, which formed the most northern 
part of Palestine, embracing a tract of country 
about fifty miles loner and twenty-five broad. Matt - iv - 33; 

Mark i. 39 ■ Luke 

It was bounded on the west by Phoenicia and the iv ^ ' 
Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Jordan 
and the Lake of Tiberias, on the north by Coele -Syria, and on 
the south by Samaria. It was a fertile country, full of romantic 
valleys, and containing, it is said, two hundred towns and villages ; 
and Josephus says ( Wars, iii. 3, § 3) that the smallest contained 
more than fifteen thousand inhabitants. The people were earnest, 
intelligent, and remarkable for their bravery, but despised by the 
inhabitants of Judaea, because their dialect was uncouth and the 
land filled with " Gentiles," who had been attracted thither by the 
delightfulness of the country. 

Through this region Jesus made a tour. He went into the syn- 
agogues and discharged the functions of a rabbi. In his time 
the rabbi was not a regularly graduated teacher 
of the law, as somewhat later, but was still re- Ga ^ s travels in 
garded by the people as the successor- of the 
ancient prophet. Jesus preached his doctrine of "the kingdom," 
and exerted his marvellous power of healing, so much that by his 
words and deeds he created a fame of himself that went through- 
out all Syria, through Palestine and Phoenicia, carried probably 
by the caravans that went from Damascus by the Sea of Galilee to 
the Mediterranean. Great multitudes followed him from all parts 
of Galilee, and from the " Decapolis " (a region so called from its 
ten cities, which were inhabited mainly by Gentiles, and is said 
by Hitter to have been founded by the veterans of the army of 
Alexander), and from the neighborhood and the city of. Jerusa- 
lem, and from Perea, beyond Jordan. 

On this journey occurred, in some town not named, the healing 
of a leper. 

The leprosy is the most horrible of diseases, and all the details 
of its symptoms and effects strike our imaginations most painfully. 
Although not strictly exclusively confined to the 
Orient, it is the special scourge of the East. 
When it first made its appearance we shall probably never be able 



184 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

to learn. Perhaps the earliest recorded mention of this plague is 
in the books of Moses. Of the leprosy in general the origin is 
readily found in the nature of the climate in eastern lands. The 
dryness and hotness of the atmosphere of Egypt and Syria would 
naturally generate cutaneous diseases, which, among the lower 
classes, would be aggravated by unwholesome diet and the want 
of personal cleanliness. In modern books of medicine a " brick- 
layer's itch " and a " baker's itch " are specified. 

Leprosy appears under four forms — elephantiasis, black leprosy, 
red leprosy, and white leprosy. The first of these is especially 
an Egyptian form, and is known sometimes by the name ulcus 
JEgypti. Its name comes from the swelling and hardening of 
the ankle-joints, so that the feet come to resemble the hoofs of the 
elephant. It produces melancholy, sleeplessness, voracious hun- 
ger, and unquenchable thirst. It is not rapid. The patient may 
live twenty years in this horrible condition, and then die of suf- 
focation. The white leprosy is known as the lepra Mosaica, and 
is described with a minuteness that is painful in Leviticus xiii. 

Yery great diversity of opinion has existed on the question of 

the contagiousness of the leprosy. Dean Alford and Archbishop 

Trench deny that it is contagious. They cite the 

,on agious- ^ age o £ Naaman (2 Kings v.), who while he was 



ness, 



a leper held place at court and commanded the 
forces of the Syrian king ; and also the case of Grehazi (2 Kings 
viii.), who, while he was an incurable leper, held familiar conver- 
sation with the king of Israel. The leper's exclusion these learned 
authors assign to the fact that he was ceremonially unclean. 
Modern travellers and writers tell us that in Palestine it is still an 
open question whether mere contact will communicate the disease ; 
but all "the police regulations about Jerusalem and Damascus, and 
even among the Arabs, show that there is a dread of touching 
lepers. They are excluded from the camp and city, are separated 
from their kinspeople and acquaintances, and live in a commu- 
nity of wretchedness, having no companionship but that of sufferers 
afflicted like themselves. But it is " hereditary, with an awfully 
infallible certainty. 1 ' * The child of leprous parents may exhibit 

* Dr. Thomson's The Land and the taneously, without hereditary or aiiy 

Book, vol. ii. p. 519. This author says other possible connection with those 

also, that " fresh cases appear from time previously diseased." 
to time, in which it seems to arise spon- 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 185 

all the usual sweetness of infancy and be bright and beautiful ; 
but j ast as certainly as it lives it will begin to show the terrify- 
ing ngnsof the horrible disease, and will finally perish of a malady 
which medical science has discovered no skill to cure and almost 
none to mitigate. 

The symptoms and the effects of this disease are very loath- 
some. There comes a white swelling or scab, with a change of 
the color of the hair on the part from its natural 

, mil n . Symptoms. 

hue to yellow; then the appearance or a taint 
going deeper than the skin, or raw flesh appearing in the swell- 
ing. Then it spreads and attacks the cartilaginous portions of 
the body. The nails loosen and drop off, the gums are absorbed, 
and the teeth decay and fall out ; the breath is a stench, the nose 
decays ; fingers, hands, feet, may be lost, or the eyes eaten out. 
The human beauty has gone into corruption, and the patient f eeh 
that he is being eaten as by a fiend, who consumes him slowly in 
a long remorseless meal that will not end until he be destroyed. 
He is shut out from his fellows. As they approach he must cry, 
" Unclean ! unclean ! " that all humanity may be warned from 
his precincts. He must abandon wife and child. He must go 
to live with other lepers, in disheartening view of miseries similar 
to his own. He must dwell in dismantled houses or in the tombs. 
He is, as Trench says, a dreadful parable of death. By the laws 
of Moses (Lev. xiii. 45 ; Num. vi. 9 ; Ezek. xxiv. 17) he was com- 
pelled, as if he were mourning for his own decease, to bear about 
him the emblems of death, the rent garments ; he was to keep his 
head bare and his lip covered, as was the custom with those who 
were in communion with the dead. When the Crusaders brought 
the leprosy from the East, it was usual to clothe the leper in a 
shroud, and to say for him the masses for the dead.* 

In all ages this indescribably horrible malady has been con 
sidered incurable. The Jews believed that it was inflicted by 

Jehovah directly, as a punishment for some extra- 

t ., , t , £ Incurable, 

ordinary perversity or some transcendent act or 

sinfulness, and that only God could heal it. When Naaman was 

cured, and his flesh came back like that of a little child, he said, 

"Now I know that there is no Grod in all the earth but in Isiael." 

(2 Kings v. 14, 15.) It was to be the test of the Messiah, the 

* Trench on Miracles, p. 176. 



186 



FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



Deliverer sent out from Jehovah, that he should be able to cure 
the leprosy. Cyril of Alexandria calls it iraOos ov/c taacfiov, the in- 
curable disease. The report of it struck horror into the minds 
of peoples afar. The Greek poet ^Eschylus * has a few powerful 
lines in which he describes the symptoms, and dwells, as Moses 
did, upon the fact of the spreading energy of the evil, and makes 
that an argument for the theory that the leprosy was the special 
scourge of God. Tacitus f describes the Jews as " a race detested 
by the gods," saying that when they were in Egypt they all had 
the leprosy, and that when the king inquired of Jupiter Ammon 
how the kingdom could be freed from this great calamity, he was 
told that it could be effected only by driving this wretched race 
from the country. 

Such is the leprosy, and such were lepers in the days of Je- 
sus. Other sufferers had sympathy and help. The leper was 
regarded as stricken of God, smitten of Him, and afflicted by 
Him.J No one sat by his couch of pain ; no hand touched his 
brow with cooling moisture ; no kiss of love ever distilled itself on 
his lips. 

A poor wretch corroded with leprosy had heard of the power 
and goodness of Jesus, whose reputation had gone down among 
the outcasts in the tombs. He came near the 
wonder-worker, and kneeled, and fell on his face, 
and worshipped, and said with extraordinary faith 
and pathos, " Thou canst make me clean, if thou 
wilt." The historians of the New Testament tell 
a calmness which seems itself miraculous. We 
ordinary historians are moved by the touching postures, and acts, 
and fancied accents of these two men. Laying all dogmas aside, 
here is a historic group of profound and powerful poetic interest. 
Standing there is a young teacher, who has aroused the dull ears 
of plodding, stupid, ritualistic religionists of his day, and attracted 
the attention of the fashionable, the gay, the heathen rulers of his 
people, and of the busy merchants intent on trade. A populous 
region begins to be full of his praises. He is stirring his people 
and his age by religious views the most practical, full of common 



Jesus heals a 
leper. Matt. viii. 
1-4; Mark i. 40- 
45; Luke v. 12- 
14. 

this story with 



* .Esch., CJiarph., 271-274. 
f Tacitus, Ann., lib. v. 
% In quoting from Isaiah the phrases 
usually understood to be prophetic of 



' ' the Christ," I am reminded of a strange 
old Jewish tradition that the 
was to be a leper. 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 187 

sense, adapted to human wants, yet lofty and spiritnal, and uttered 
in a tone of paramount authority. His life is blamelessly pure. 
The innocency of infancy, the tenderness of womanhood, the 
strength of manhood, the gravity of a sage, the endurance of a 
martyr, and the daring of a hero must have been the mingled 
elements of his aspect and his manners. Serene and lofty and 
sweet, Jesus stands, while at his feet a leper lies, disgusting, 
loathsome, rotten. He has been burning with fever for many 
years., for he is " full of leprosy." It is in his blood and flesh, 
a fret and a torment. He has no hope from medicine or nursing. 
He can look forward only to a death-in-lif e existence, whose nights 
shall be filled with dreams that scare and visions that terrify 
(Job vii.), and whose mornings shall be an awakening to face an 
approaching and inevitable doom. This is his only, his lasl 
chance. He has heard of the mighty deeds of Jesus. His faith 
in the power of Jesus is unfaltering. The Messiah will be a 
leper-curer. This is the Messiah. He can. Will he % That is 
the question. T^the goodness of this wonderful Eabbi be equal 
to his power the leper will be saved. But perhaps the leprosy is 
the one evil God has determined not yet to remedy, and this, 
after all, may not be the Messiah. 

It is not improbable that all these thoughts passed through the 
mind of the sufferer. He saw in fancy his home, his wife, his 
babes, and all that makes the home circle powerful in its attrac- 
tions. H the Great Teacher should cure him he should go back 
to all those dear delights. If he refused, then the tombs and 
wretched companionship and despair ! 

Will he % Let us look up from the suppliant to that face of 
lofty lovingness. Jesus is moved — moved with compassion. No 
one else had ever felt so for the leper. All others 
had been moved, but it had been with disgust or „ . S1 * 

7 & the healer. 

horror. The brow of Jesus lifts itself. The 
eyes of the teacher soften and brighten. His hands stir slightly. 
His lips quiver with emotion. His frame is, perhaps, agitated. 
All-health, unbroken Wholesomeness, untainted Physical Purity, 
stands face to face with Disease and Corruption. It is a moment 
of critical conflict. He is about to speak a word which is to bo 
decisive of his power or his feebleness. There can be no half- 
success. It will be complete, and surpass in its effects all other 
words that ever passed human lips, or be instantly followed by a 



188 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVEK IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

surrender oi moral power. He dares to utter that word, and 
does it with elevated calmness, fearless of ceremonial impurity 
or infectious disease. Stepping forward, he breaks through the 
whole ceremonial law that severed this abject sufferer from de- 
cent people, and laying his lingers on the hot head of the throb- 
bing leper, thrilled the sufferer with a delicious sensation, and 
into his ears, all stuffed with matter of corruption, shot the music 
of the simple speech of love and power : " I will : be clean." 
More quickly than can be written the man at his feet felt new 
fountains of health created at his heart, new blood coursing 
through his veins, new flesh as of a babe's pushing the rottenness 
from off his bones, and he arose, shook himself, sloughed off his 
leprosy, and stood out clean. 

Immediately upon the performance of this miracle Jesus 

charged the healed man not to make it known until he had gone 

to the priest, and offered for his cleansing those 

argeo es i ^ im g w j 1 j[ c j 1 Moses had commanded "for a tes- 

to the healed man. # n 

timony unto them," says Mark (i. 44). The Jew- 
ish law at that time was that if a person should be restored from 
the leprosy lie should be examined by the priest of his district. 
After seven days he underwent a second examination, performed 
a lustration, and then went to Jerusalem, where he offered a pre- 
scribed sacrifice and was pronounced clean. There were slight 
forms of leprosy, as still may be found in Palestine, which were 
curable. The sanitary regulations referred to these. But still, as 
they were forms of leprosy, the separation had to be made. Seat- 
ed leprosy was considered incurable, and, until the days of Jesus, 
no cure is recorded except of those who were miraculously 
healed in the times of the prophets. Generally Jesus enjoined 
silence upon those whom he restored, and the reasons are appar- 
ent. The importance of his ministry, as is always the case with 
great men, lay in his spiritual influence rather than in the mere 
words and acts which conveyed it. His miracles were, only acces- 
sories. For the spiritual as well as physical good of the restored he 
commanded quiet. Nor did he desire to have his deeds so bruited 
abroad as that his ministry should be obstructed by great crowds, 
nor such enthusiasm generated as should lead to mobs or political 
complications. These were general prudential reasons. In one 
case, at least (Mark v. 9), we shall find that he gave an opposite 
direction. But in each case, in addition to the general, there was 



THE FIRST TOUR OF G^XILEE. 



189 



Matt. ix. 2-8; 
Mark ii. 4-12 ; 
Luke v. 17-26. 



a special reason. The priest had pronounced him a leper : if the 

priest, unmoved by the knowledge that Jesus had cleansed him, 

should pronounce him healed, the " testimony to them " would be 

complete that Jesus had really performed this wonderful deed 

and had thus established his claims to the Messiahship. 

But the glad and grateful man could not be restrained. He 

blazed the matter abroad so much that crowds 

came flocking to Jesus, until he was compelled to „ ' 

,'.,».■ , , from the public. 

withdraw himself into a solitary place. And 

there for some days he refreshed his soul by devotional exercises. 

It was needful, for trouble was brewing for the great teacher. 
A Messiah that removed himself from the public was not the 
Messiah for the Jews. He returned to his chosen 
home in Capernaum. His fame had grown in his 
absence. People nocked to the house he occupied. 
Whether it was a residence he had hired, or one that 
belonged to some disciple, we cannot learn. But it was known tc 
the inhabitants of Capernaum, and to the strangers therein. He 
commenced teaching. Among his hearers were certain Phari- 
sees and doctors of the law, who had come down from Jerusalem. 
It is not quite easy to determine the motives of these listeners. 
They may have been drawn by the fame of Jesus, or they may 
have been emissaries come to collect testimony against the young 
rabbi who had made such a commotion on his visit to Jerusalem. 
Both classes probably were represented in this assembly, for Luke 
intimates that he healed some,* while some were severely critical 
upon his mode of expression in a miracle which he performed in 
their midst. The miracle was on this wise : 

Four men brought upon a pallet their friend, who was a paraly- 
tic. The entrance to Oriental houses is ordinarily by the one front 
door. This was blocked by the excessive crowd, 
so that it was impracticable to press through; 
but the desire of these men, increased probably 
by the urgency of the patient, was so great that they ascended 
the roof, probably through the adjoining house, and, crossing the 
parapet, either removed the hatchway, if Jesus was sitting in the 



Jesus heals 
paralytic. 



* The construction here is a little 
difficult. The avrovs in the original has 
no grammatical antecedent. It is rather 
unnatural to interpret it as meaning 



these Pharisees and doctors, as on its 
face it seems to do, for there was noth- 
ing in their cases to make them recep 
tive of his curative power. 



190 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVEK IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

upper chamber or removed the awning, if Jesus was sitting in the 
court-yard. In reading the statement of the evangelical histo- 
rians we must recollect the construction of eastern houses. What 
might be impossible as European and American houses are built in 
our cities was not an insuperable difficulty in the East. But it was a 
difficulty; and when Jesus saw the earnestness of all parties he said 
to the paralytic, " Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee." 
How much depends upon a little word ! This speech by Jesus 
was the turning-point in his history. If he had said, " May thy 
sins be forgiven," he would simply have uttered 
mportanceo a an aS pi ra ti Ti of piety. But undertaking to de- 
clare upon his own individual authority the for- 
giveness of the man's sins, in other words, forgiving Mm, he vol- 
untarily took a vast step forward, ascended to a higher and more 
conspicuous platform of claim, and aroused against himself all 
the philosophic, religious, and traditionary prejudices of his peo- 
ple. It was the commission of a most, if not the most, grievous 
crime known to the Jews. It was blasphemy. It was a claim to 
exercise the prerogative of God. It was making himself equal 
with God. It was making himself God. And there was no re- 
treat for Jesus. He had said it. The learned visitors sat reason- 
ing with themselves, " Who can forgive sins but God only ? " 
Jesus read their thoughts, and manifested his penetration by tell- 
ing them just what was passing in their minds. 

He proceeded to establish this awful claim. Any fool or crazy 
man may claim anything which is not susceptible of proof or dis- 
proof. What evidence is furnished that heaven 
ratifies the assertion of any human being that the 
sins of another human being are forgiven? It is a pertinent 
question. The claim may be at once futile and sinful. Jesus 
asked them this question : "Which is easier — to say ' Thy sins are 
forgiven,' or to say 'Rise, take thy bed and walk?' " To forgive 
sins is not less difficult than to heal disease, to one who can do 
both ; but it is less easy of proof, as the latter is open to the senses. 
But neither can be done without the will of God, and God will 
not indorse blasphemy by a miracle, and therefore Jesus said to 
them, " That you may know that I have power to forgive sins, 
listen and behold." And turning to the sick man he said, "Rise, 
take up your bed, and go to your own house." There was no 
struggle, no slow stretching of himself, no padnful effort to drag 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 191 

himself and his pallet through the crowd. Immediately he stood 
up before them, he gathered up that on which he had been lying, 
and started for his home. The crowd disparted. They made way 
for this new wonder. The man went home shouting. Amaze- 
ment, fear, and gladness took hold of the people. The great 
power of God had come down among men. 

It is to be noticed how Jesus, in the methods of this miracle, sets 
forth the close connection between an unwholesome spiritual con- 
dition and the physical maladies of mankind. 

„ , j. , .j. ., . Body and soul. 

He treats a disease somehow as it it were a sin. 
" Your sins are forgiven, rise up, go home." In this case, as per- 
haps invariably in cases of paralysis, some sin, some excessive 
3elf -in dulgence, lies at the root of this bodily disablement. Jesus 
is compassionate to the sufferer, but honest with the sinner. He 
addresses him tenderly but faithfully. He calls him " son," but 
gives him to understand that his sympathy with suffering does 
not for a moment blind him to the badness of the sin from which 
it sprang So indescribably sublime was the self-possession of 
Jesus that no crisis threw him from his balance, and yet so obvious 
is it that he never thinks of self-possession and mental equipoise. 
His greatness inheres. 

Shortly after the healing of the paralytic Jesus was found at 
the sea-side, teaching multitudes who gathered about him. 

Making a short excursion from Capernaum along the Lake of 
Gennesaret, discoursing on religious subjects, he came to the 
road from Damascus, which, crossing the Jordan 
by "Jacob's Bridge," went along the lake coast to ^^"'*^ 
the neighboring cities. On this road, near Caper- . Mark 'ji 
naum or some other town, it is quite probable 
there would be a toll-house. Such a station somewhere Jesus 
came upon, and there found Matthew, called also Levi, who was 
discharging the duties of a Roman portitor, or tax-gatherer, com- 
monly called " publican " in our version. It was the most degrad- 
ing employment in which a Jew could be found. It was making 
himself, for gain, a servant of the oppressor of his people. Jesus 
seems to have known him. He simply said to him, " Follow me," 
and Matthew immediately obeyed. Here was another shock given 
to Jewish prejudice. It was intolerable that he should select his 
circle of nearest friends and disciples from men whose reputation 
was so ruinously bad. 



192 



FIKST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JEStJS. 



Matthew's feast. 



But something more was done, probably on that very day, to in- 
tensify the growing opposition. The newly called disciple made 
a great feast at his house. All his old companions 
were welcome to his table. On this day he must 
have consulted Jesus, who did not object to dining with publicans 
and those technically called sinners by the scientifically religious 
Pharisees. And so there was a great crowd of bad men, and Jesus 
and his disciples eating with them. This seemed the crowning 
outrage. He had pronounced a man forgiven who had not gone 
through the ritual, thus bursting the bands of sacerdotal succes- 
sion and ecclesiastical exclusiveness. He then broke down the 
pales of social life, which were also themselves of ecclesiastical 
construction. The Pharisees remonstrated with his disciples. 
But when Jesus heard it he said to them, with splendid irony, 
" They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are 
sick. Go learn what God meant when he spake by his prophet, 
' I will have mercy and not sacrifice.' (Hosea vi. 6.) And I am 
not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." 

His reply was silencing to the Pharisees, and should be instruc- 
tive to people of all ages. It first quotes the proverb, " The physi- 
cian is not for the whole, but for the sick," which 
fco th P Ph. ri SU was known to Jews and Gentiles, and is of uni- 
versal use.* It was employed ironically against 
these Pharisees. They were as unsound as the sinners that sat at 
meat with him, the difference being that the latter knew them- 
selves sin-sick and the former did not. Seriously, the place for 
the physician is in the wards of the hospital, and not in the crowd 
of hearty, healthy laborers. The man whose purity and exaltation 
of character are not such as will draw the low to his higher plat- 
form, and not be degraded to theirs, is not the man to be even a 
Moral Reformer, not to say a Great Regenerator. Men cannot 
from great distances do good to their fellow-men. It is amid the 
amenities of social life that much is done for good morals. 

And then he quoted from their sacred books : " I will have 
mercy and not sacrifice," says God. When afflictions come in 
His providence they may have a chastening effect ; but lacerations 
of ourselves or others, of our bodies or our son Is, are not accept- 



* It is found in the Talmud {Tal. 
Babyl, tit. Bara Kama, fol. 46, col. 2). 
Used by Antisthenes in Laertius, Dio- 



genes in Stobaeus, Pausanias in Plutarch, 
Ovid in " De Ponto." 



'■$? '..■ ;-'■' - -Jf 




ill £ 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 193 

able to God, who prefers a life of love to all self-tormenting. 
Jesns seems to teach that whatever sacrifice a man may make fcr 
God, if there be no charity, it all counts for nothing ; that charity 
must animate all toils to make them beautiful in the sight of God. 
As if he had said, " You Pharisees offer great sacrifices, and yet 
are unmerciful to your poor brethren who make no religious pro- 
fession. You are merciless ; how can you expect mercy % " 

From the proverb and the scripture he ascends to an authorita- 
tive declaration concerning himself : " I am come to call sinners 
to repentance, not the righteous." In this there seems some irony, 
but the proposition involves a profound truth. In every age, 
from every teacher, only those receive benefit who are conscious 
of needing help. The Pharisees of every age are those whose ex- 
terior deceives them as to their inward condition, and they are 
the very people who receive the least good from the beneficial 
agencies abroad in the world. Sinners, who being sinners, know 
themselves to be sinners, are those to whom salvation comes. It 
is not the lack of power in the spiritual agencies that keeps men 
from being good, but generally the lack of a sense of their own 
need, and a willingness to throw themselves open to the sweet in- 
fluences of the spiritual world. And thus he answered the 
Pharisees. 

They had talked to his disciples ; then the disciples of John 
talked to him, and said, " We and the Pharisees fast often : why 
do not your disciples fast?" Let us make all 

n j. , ., j. ., mi • John's disciples 

allowance of charity for these men. 1 heirs was , . , 
a pitiable condition. Their master was in prison, 
and they could not bear to see Jesus in the midst of festivities. 
Their school had wellnigh broken up. Many of John's disciples 
had attached themselves to Jesus. There were probably a few of 
the stanchest and most obstinate followers of the Baptist, who 
were ready to acknowledge what was good in Jesus, but clung 
closely to the modes and teachings of John, and in their obstinacy 
classed themselves with the Pharisees. After such numberless 
demonstrations of the folly of such a course, it is amazing how 
men persist in clinging to the dawn, and in suffering as it broad- 
ens into the fulness of the day. Jesus answered them by almost 
echoing the words of their great master. John had spoken of the 
pleasure which the friend of the bridegroom enjoyed as he heard 
the voice of the bridegroom. Jesus replies to these querulous dis 
13 




194 FIRST AND SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

ciples of John, " Can the sons of the bridechamber mourn, aa 
long as the bridegroom is with them ? but the days will come, 
when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall 
*hey fast. ISTo man putteth a patch of new cloth unto an old 

garment ; for that which is put 

in to fill it up taketh from the 

garment, and the rent is made 

worse. Neither do men pour 

new wine into old skins: else 

skin bottles. fa e s k ms break, and the wiue 

runneth out, and the skins perish : but they put new wine into 

new skins, and both are preserved." 

He thus does several things in one reply. He reminds them of 
the light in which their master had received him, namely, as ful- 
filling the prophecies by coming to espouse the 
ep j o esus. ^^ (Isai. li v. 5-10.) It ought to be a festive 
season. The gladdest day of a man's life should be the day of 
his nuptials. The disciples were represented as the intimate 
friends of the bridegroom, those who were accustomed to go with 
him to the bride's house to bring her to her home with great re- 
joicings. It was not meet that they should fast, for it was the 
Jewish teaching, as we learn from Maimonides, " that all fasting 
should cease in the days of the Messiah, and that there should be 
then only holidays and festivals, as it is written in Zechariah 
viii. 19." 

He reminds them of the difference between the old and the 

hew. The old must pass away. He was come to inaugurate 

the new. In the old hard dispensation there were 

fast-days, when all must fast. There was to be 
new. J y 

nothing of the kind thereafter. It is amazing 
how this is overlooked by Church and by State in the absurd ap- 
pointing of special days when all the community must fast or 
feast together. What is one man's fast may be another man's 
festival. When a man has the sense of his Maker's love and 
presence — his Maker is his husband, according to the old Hebrew 
idea — he has no occasion to fast. As long as that remains he 
should keep perpetual holiday. It is only a sense of His absence 
that should make a man fast, and that might befall him on an 
appointed festival. 

And so, having spoken of a wedding, garments and wine are 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GALILEE. 



195 



naturally suggested, and from them he derives two very striking 
illustrations of the proposition, that it is prepos- 
terous to attempt to work the new into the old, 
the new Present into the old Past, the new Jesusism into the old 
Judaism. A man does not put a patch of new cloth on an old 
worn garment, lest the strong patch tear away the weak cloth in 
which it is inserted, and thus the rent become larger. Jesusism 
is to be a totally new thing. It is not to be worked into the cere- 
monials of Judaism. It is to be quite a new robe, all new. 
There is no more need of the old Judaism. You may give it 
away to poor beggarly creatures who may be content to cover 
their nakedness with the faded spangles and rent skirts of its 
threadbare ritualism, but the new ages are to wear a new dress. 
And how greatly every effort of the later times to make the work 
of Jesus a mere improvement upon Judaism, has made the whole 
matter worse. Jesus swept away old things; "old types, old 
ceremonies, old burdens, sacrifices, priests, sabbaths, and holy 
days are all passed away: behold all things have become new." * 
It was the style of Jesus to advance from some thought sug- 
gested by an occurrence, or question, or objection, to higher and 

higher truths, drawing men up to spiritual things 
x. ^ r * a 4=1 • * • Higher truths. 

by the ordinary methods or human intercommuni- 
cation. The garment is external. Wine in the skins f is some- 
thing internal. If these skins were old, the new and fermenting 
wine would burst them, so that the wine would be lost and the 
bottle be rendered worthless. Just such a result, Jesus taught, 
would take place when men attempted to put the new wine of 
his gospel into the old bottles of ceremonials : the whole would be 
lost. Very early men tried to hold the living spirit of Christian- 
ity in the dead body of Pharisaic Judaism, and the result was that 
they made neither good Christians nor decent Jews. The spirit 
which Jesus brought into the world was the spirit of regeneration 
rather than reformation of manners. In the individual man the 
new life of progress comes into him, and works itself out into the 
production of all proprieties. He cannot be made a new man by 



* Dean Alf ord. Greek Testament, in 
loco. 

f Milk and oil, water and wine, are 
still in the East, as they were in the 
days of Jesus, carried in bottles made 



of the skins of animals, commonly of 
goats. To this day they may be seen 
at almost every turn in Egypt and Syria. 
It is an ancient arrangement, as appears 
from Homer and Herodotus. 



196 FIRST Aim SECOND PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

mending him outwardly. But if any attempt to confine the cur- 
rent of the gospel within the banks of certain prescribed forms, 
all good results will be lost. 

Jesus and the spirit of his gospel are against rubric and ritual 
and ceremonial, and churchism generally. He does not seek to 
make churchmen, but Christians. That is taught in the saying 
in reply to the question of the disciples of John. It is taught 
everywhere. But it is a lesson professed Christians seem loth 
to learn. They have repeated in all times the folly of putting 
new wine in old bottles. Examples might be produced from all 
the ages and all the sects. Men battle heroically for the liberty 
which they will not grant others. 

The history of the world is divided into two parts, and the line 

is the life of Jesus. Before him there was not the animating 

spirit of progress. Humanity went forward, but 
Jesus, the divid- .f „ -, . * o , • • -, 

ins- line of history went forward m a rut. Alter him it began to 

spread itself in all directions. But still men en- 
deavored to hand it down from generation to generation in old 
skins that would burst and spill the wine. Hence the delay of 
Christianity in taking the world. The intention of Jesus was to 
establish a religion which should have no binding forms, no pre- 
scribed temple-service, no priesthood, nothing of the old, but be 
new, and in spirit, and reside in the hearts of men ; and this we 
find frequently set forth in his teachings. It was the flinging 
away of the old bottles which has made modern times so progres- 
sive. It is the powerful influence of Jesus which helps men to 
do broad, great, good things, even if it be objected that they are 
not old things. 

It was such conduct as this, and such teaching, that brought 
against him the wrath of scribe and Pharisee, of priest and Levite. 

Old Bottles or If he had been content to put his " new wine " 
Deatl1 - into their " old bottles," they would have been 

ready for the arrangement. But so great was his spirit, and so far- 
seeing his indescribably clear intellect, that he never for a moment 
yielded to denominationalism and sectarianism. He knew what 
the result would be. He knew that he had not come into the 
world merely to reform the Jewish Church. He had come to 
emancipate and regenerate the ages, and to save the world. He 
flung the glove down to li the Church " then existing, and the re- 
sult was that he was finally murdered. Any pure man who at- 



THE FIRST TOUR OF GAXJXEE. 



197 



tempts to follow Jesus in this particular may expect some simi- 
lar fate. Old bottles are generally considered more valuable 
than new wine, by sectarians. " The Old Bottles or Death ! " is 
the alternative of their battle-cry. Jesus preferred to die and 
trust his new wine to the coming generations. 




ASTCIENT BOTTLES 



PART IV. 

FROM THE SECOND UNTIL THE THIRD PASSOVEK 
EST THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF JESUS. 

ONE TEAK — PROBABLY FROM A.D. 28 TO A.D. 29. 



CHAPTER I, 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 

So far from striving to allay the dislike engendered by his dis 
regard of the ceremonials and traditions of the Jews, Jesus soon 
makes an attack upon Pharisaism in its stronghold, namely, the 
punctilious observance of the Sabbath. 

The Passover * drew near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem to 

celebrate it. "Within the city, and near the Sheep-gate, there was a 

Jerusalem. House-of- P°°l> called in the Syro-Chaldee, which was the 

outpouring. John v. vernacular of Jesus, Baith-Hisdaw, or Bethesda, 

1-47. 

that is, House-of- Outpouring, the precise location 
of which it is probably now impossible to indicate. For a long 
time Bethesda was supposed to be identical with a large excava- 
tion near St. Stephen's Gate, the immense depth of which, sev 
enty-five feet, makes this most improbable ; it is now believed to 
be a fosse which guarded the northern side of the fortress of An- 
tonia. The most probable site is, as Dr. Robinson (Researches, i. 



* This Passover commenced on Wed- 
nesday, the 9 th of April. That this 
festival is here meant, is evident not 
only from the whole context and con- 
nected history, but from a variety of 
other considerations, which cannot here 



be specified for want of space. The 
absence of the definite article (" a 
feast," verse 1) is no proof against this 
view, for where John refers to any other 
feast, he expressly mentions its appro- 
priate name (John vii. 2 ; x. 22). 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 



199 



501, 508) has shown, the "Fountain of the Virgin," in the Yalley 
of Kedron, a short distance above the Pool of Siloam, with 
which it has subterranean connection, as perhaps also with the 
fountain under the Great Mosque. Around this pool were built 
five porches, which gave shelter to the invalids who came to 




POOL OF HEZEKIAH. 



enjoy the benefits supposed to be conferred by the medicinal pro- 
perties of this water. It was the popular belief of the Jews that 
at certain seasons an angel went down into this water and stirred 
it, and whoever thereupon first stepped into the pool was made 
whole.* Great numbers, therefore, of chronic cases of blindness, 



* The 4th verse of chapter v. of John 
reads thus : ' ' For an angel went down 
at a certain season into the pool, and 
troubled the water : whosoever then 
first after the troubling of the water 
stepped in, was made whole of what- 
soever disease he had." It is a con- 
troverted passage, but the weight of 
authority seems to me to fall against 



its genuineness. (But Dr. Howard Cros- 
by, who is high authority, is of the op- 
posite opinion and considers it genuine. ) 
It is easy to see how it might have come 
into the text. Take it out and you 
have the history, namely, that there 
was such a pool, and that impotent folk 
lay there, and that Jesus found one such 
and made him whole. To account for 



200 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



The impotent man. 



of paralysis, of other diseases, brought themselves to these porches, 
and when the agitation of the water took place the first to enter 
it was believed would be benefited. 

It was the Sabbath-day. Jesus, in his walk, came upon the 
House-of-Mercy. Among the infirm persons he saw one who 
arrested his attention. He had been an invalid 
thirty-eight years. How long he had been on the 
watch for the stirring of the water is not recorded. Paralysis, it 
would seem, had stricken down body and mind. He was helpless 
and hopeless. Jesus said : " Will you be healed % " The man an- 
swered : " Sir, I have no one, when the pool is troubled, to put me 
in ; but while I am coming, another steps down before me." Poor 
man ! He had long and longingly gazed at the pool, and when 
the sudden rising came he strove to step in ; but so helpless was 
his body that he failed ; another preceded ; and this was repeated 
until he had grown hopeless and languid. Jesus said : " Pise, 
take up your bed, and walk." It was a command of power. He 
was not a convalescent ; he was well. He was not recovering ; 
he was whole. 

What was life to this man was death to the peace of Jesus. The 
cure was on the Sabbath-day. The joyful man went homeward 
cured on the Sab- carrying his pallet. Some Jewish elders met him 
bath-day. an( j re buked him for doing this on the Sabbath- 

day. The rej)ly of the man contained that undesigned appear- 
ance of ingenuity which we often find in perfect ingenuousness : 
"He that made me whole, the same said to me, Take up your bed 



the appearance of all these people at 
this pool some annotator gave truth- 
fully what was the popular opinion, and 
in niany copyings it would easily creep 
into the text, and thus seem to be, what 
it might not have been, the opinion of 
the historian. How it came to be the 
popular opinion is accounted for by 
some on the ground that the pool did 
possess some qualities which were bene- 
ficial to some invalids, which qualities 
came from gases generated in the earth 
or from the blood of the victims sacri- 
ficed in the Temple, and coming by pri- 
vate conduit down to this pool. To 
this day there is an irregularity in the 
flow of water in this fountain. Dr. 



Robinson and his companion discovered 
it one day when they were measuring 
the fountain. The water very suddenly 
rose more than a foot, and as suddenly 
subsided. A woman who came up at 
the moment, and who was accustomed 
to wash at the fountain daily, said that 
she had seen it dry, and men and cattle 
suffering from thirst, when all at once 
it would boil up again, and that this 
boiling or flowing was at irregular inter- 
vals. The common people have aban- 
doned the beautiful fancy of an angel 
in the fountain, and now say that a 
great dragon lies within ; that when he 
sleeps it flows, and when he wakes it 
stops. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 201 

and walk." His argument lay in the assumption that whoso could 
do so great a thing as by one sentence to give entire health to a 
paralyzed man is one whose command to carry burdens on the 
Sabbath might be safely obeyed. But the leading learned men 
of the Jews did not think so. The health, or even the life of a 
human being: was not to be set in the scale against a tradition of 
the elders. They knew that Jesus was doing mighty works. They 
suspected, who had told the man to carry his bed. If Jesus — and 
who else could it be ? — they had an occasion for an open contro- 
versy with him. But the man did not know the name of his 
benefactor. 

Afterward Jesus found him in the Temple, and said to him : 
" Behold, you are made whole ; sin no more, lest a worse thing 
come unto you." It would seem that his excesses 

J Recognizes Jesoa. 

had been the occasion of his physical ailments, 
and to the act of healing Jesus added, what is often better than a 
cure, an exhortation to a more sanitary mode of life. But the in- 
terview made Jesus known to the healed man, who went and told 
the elders that it was Jesus who had made him whole. It was 
not as informer that the man could have communicated this. 
The Sabbath question was not so important to him as his own re- 
covery. It was not who had commanded him to carry his little 
pallet home on the Sabbath, but who had healed him. He looked 
on that side, the elders on the other. It aroused the whole hate 
of their nature, and they opened with Jesus a controversy that 
was to terminate with his death. 

In our day it seems strange that such connection should exist ; 
that a most good man should be slaughtered because he would not 
conform to what even we might consider a wholesome regulation. 
But it did occur in the case of Jesus, and has occurred in times 
much nearer our own. At this point in the progress of Jesus 
we reach the Sabbath question. 

The references to this subject in the Old Testament may be 
supposed to be familiar to the readers of this book, but must be 
glanced at. The first is in the history of the ere- The sabbath before 
ation, in Genesis i. and ii. The next is in the Mosea - 
Patriarchal period, and in several places, some more patent and 
some more obscure. For instance, in Genesis iv. 3 is the phrase 
"In ^process of time . . Cain brought of the fruit of the 
ground an offering unto the Lord." In the Hebrew it is "At the 



202 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEE Etf THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



end of days" Again : in chapter vii. 4, 10, " seven days " are 
mentioned, as also in chapter viii. 10 and 12 : these in reference to 
the deluge. In chapter xxix. 25-30, the "week" is mentioned as 
a well-known division of time, and it will be seen that that other 
Sabbatic period of seven years is mentioned in the same passage. 
Tn chapter 1. it is said that " Joseph made a monrning for his father 
seven days." 

These are before the days of Moses. In Exodns xvi. we have 
the account of the sending of manna, and the ordinance that twice 

The sabbath in the the usual amount should be gathered on the sixth 
Decalogue. fay. Whether this whole passage indicates a pre- 

vious Sabbath observance or announces it as a new institution, each 
reader must determine for himself, as the position of the article in 
the Hebrew and the general passage may impress him.* The 
next passage is the most important in the history of the Sabbath. 
In Exodus xx. it is embodied in the Decalogue, with specifications. 
To the Jew the Decalogue was not merely a religious symbol, it 
was also a national ensign. To violate the Decalogue was to be 
guilty at once of sin and of treason, and they came afterward to 
make the Sabbath the chief of these ten items of national cove- 
nant, so that, as one of their writers said, " He that violates the 
Sabbath is as he that worships the stars, and both are heathens." 

Whoever fairly reads the Old Testament at large, whether he 

believes the Hebrew institutions to have been given by Almighty 

God or to be the product of the wisdom of man, 

Of divine origin. *■ -ir? 

must know that the Jews believed them to be oi 
divine origin, and must feel that under all the circumstances of 
Hebrew nationality they were wise and beneficent regulations. 
The law of the Sabbath is obviously such. It is to be remarked 
that a Sabbatic idea runs through all the Hebrew Institutes. 
There was to be a seventh day consecrated to rest, to enjoyment, 
and to religion. There was a seventh month set aside to festivals, 
opening with the Feast of Trumpets, and containing that most 
joyful of Hebrew holidays, the Feast of Tabernacles. There 
was the seventh year, in which the land was to rest from the hand 
of the tiller. At each close of seven times seven years, each week 
of years, came in the year of Jubilee, when debts were cancelled 



* The learned G-rotius believed that 
the day had been already known and 
observed as holy, but that the law as to 



labor was now given for the first time, 
and shortly after more implicitly im 
posed in the Fourth Commandment. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 203 

and when slaves went free. The original intent, as indeed the 
original observance of the Sabbath, was not oppressive or afflictive 
bnt rather festive. At only one point of the Sabbatic cycle is any 
mention of humiliation. The people were to " afflict their souls 
on the Day of Atonement." (Levit. xxiii. 27-29.) Every Sab- 
bath except that was to be for recreation, by rest, by enjoyment, 
or by glad and happy devotion to the offices of religion. 

It will be perceived that the physical, social, and moral welfare 
of all the people was sought by these wise regulations. The 
lesson so important to know and so hard to learn, Lessons of the sab- 
that man has no proprietorship in anything earthly; bath - 
that he is holding it for God, and obtains its best uses only as ho 
uses it for God : this is the great lesson of the Sabbath. Time 
belongs to God, which man was to acknowledge by the tribute of 
the seventh day. Land belongs to God, which is recognized in 
the Sabbatic year. All things upon which a man may lay any 
claim of ownership, as upon the moneys due him from his credit- 
ors, as in the case of his servants, bought or inherited, belong at 
last to God, and to him must be remitted, as the Jubilee sets forth. 
Socially men were to be profited by the Sabbath. It was to be a 
festive day. The rich gave feasts. The poor saved their best for 
the seventh day enjoyment ; men walked abroad and visited, as 
well as met amid joyful celebrations of God's praise in taber- 
nacle, Temple, or synagogue. Labor was suspended. The body 
must rest; it rested on the Sabbath. No journeys, no business, 
no servile labor could be performed. It was a democratic insti- 
tution. Master and servant equally suspended toil and took re- 
freshment. 

In other parts of the law there were given constructions of the 
prohibition of labor in the Decalogue. It was forbidden to light 
a fire. (Exodus xxxv. 3.) Eor gathering sticks 
on the Sabbath a man was stoned. (Num. xv. 
32.) Isaiah uttered solemn warnings against the violation of the 
Sabbath, and promises of blessings to those wmo should scrupu- 
lously observe it. (Isa. lviii. 13.) Jeremiah denounced the gen 
eral violation of the Sabbath in his day, when men wrought as 
much and carried burdens in their traffic as much as on other 
days. (Jerem. xvii. 21-27.) And in the days of Ezekiel there 
was such a general falling off that the secularization of the Sab- 
hath is ranked foremost among the national sins of the Jews 



Prohibitions. 



204: 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



(Ezekiel xx. 12-24.) JSTehemiah (xiii. 15-22, and viii. 9-12) at- 
tributed their severe national calamity to the specialty heinous 
offence of neglecting the Sabbath ; and he gives an account of his 
measures for restoring the day to its proper observance, among 
which was the representation to the people that the Sabbath was 
a festival. " This day is holy unto the Lord your God : mourn 
not, nor weep. Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, 
and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared ; for 
this day is wholly unto our Lord : neither be ye sorry ; for the joy 
of the Lord is your strength." " With many such words he cheered 
the people, and they went their way to eat and to drink, and to 
send portions, and to make a great mirth, because they had under- 
stood the words that were declared unto them." * It will be seen 
that this method of observing the Sabbath is very different from 
that prescribed by subsequent Jewish and modern Puritans, who 
have made the Sabbath a burden, a darkness, and a curse, whereas 
God meant it for a blessing, and considers " holy day " the equiv- 
alent of holiday. 

The Pharisees and the rabbins, following up the work of Ne- 
hemiah, committed the error of carrying their exactions too far, 
and thus absolutely abrogating the spirit by their 
super-exact adherence to the letter of the law. 
Because Moses had forbidden the Israelites to go out of the camp 
to gather manna against God's command, a sect was established 
whose prime article of faith and practice was the maintaining 
throughout the day the posture in which they should happen to 
be when they first awoke ; a terrible way of resting. This of 
course exceeded even the usual rigor of Sabbath observance. 
Because Jeremiah had denounced the bearing of the burdens of 
traffic, men were forbidden to lift any article. It was against 
the law to hunt on the Sabbath, therefore the Pharisaic and rab- 



Pharisaic exactions. 



* As showing that the Sabbath was 
not to be a day of gloom and weeping, 
compare with the above what is written 
in 2 Chron. xxx. 21-26, Ps. xcii., and 
many other passages in the Psalms ; Isa- 
iah xxx. 29, Jeremiah xxi. 12-14, Hosea 
ii. 11. This contrasts greatly with cer- 
tain Puritan regulations, such as these : 
"21 No one shall run on the Sabbath- 
day, or walk in his garden, or elsewhere, 



except reverently to and from meeting. 
22. No one shall travel, cook victuals, 
make beds, sweep house, cut hair or 
shave, on the Sabbath-day. 23. No 
woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath. 
24. The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on 
Saturday." See Blue Laws of New 
Haven Colony 1 etc., compiled by an An- 
tiquary, It. R. Hinman, Esq. (Hartford, 
1838). 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 205 

binical schools forbade the catching of a ilea as a species of hunt- 
ing. The law prohibited the gathering of sticks, for the reason 
that that led to cooking, and while the Sabbath was to be a festival 
it was also to be a rest, so that the feast must be made ready on 
the sixth day : but these priests held that it was a violation of the 
law to mount a tree, because a branch or twig might thus be 
broken. Grass might not be walked upon, as it might be bruised, 
and that is a sort of threshing ! 

An examination of the records concerning Jesus will show, 1 
think, that he never broke the Jewish law of the Sabbath, nor 
did his disciples ; they were never charged with j eS us never broke 
that. But he did set at naught the exactions of the Sabbath law - 
the traditions of the elders. He would not be bound by the regu- 
lations of those who had no authority to overload the word of 
God with their own fanciful interpretations ; but he did employ 
the Sabbath for all its sweet restoring uses, and did affirm the 
great principles on which the Sabbatic institutions rested. 

Thus, he walked out on the Sabbath-day. Laborious travel 
was forbidden, but not recreative exercise. He visited the 
"House of Mercy," and finding an abject suffer- But disregarded Pha- 
er there he healed him. He commanded him to risaic s losscs - 
take up his little pallet, such as beggars carried with them to rest 
upon, and go to his home. This was no toil that could weary 
him. He was in fresh strength. It would have been preposter- 
ous to lie there, just where Jesus found him, and continue all the 
remainder of the Sabbath-day in the posture which he held when 
healed. This would have been according to the teaching of the 
sect of Dositheus, but it would have been most unnatural. Jesus 
sent him home with his bed in his hands. 

The Jews raged and sought to kill Jesus, not the healed man. It 
was not, then, the burden-bearing, but the healing, that exasperated 
them. He addressed the spiritual leaders of the Jews in defence 
of himself. He does not appear to have been called before the San 
hedrim, or even any lower court; but the persons to whom the words 
were addressed had official position, and the words may therefore 
be considered as spoken in defence. The address drawn out by 
this Sabbath incident is given at large by John in his fifth chap 
ter, and is worthy our careful study. 

In reply to the charge of working on the Sabbath, Jesus said 
to them. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He corrects 



206 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OE JESUS. 

their false ideas of God's rest, as if it were a barren cessatior 
His reply to accusa- f rom all activity. All the Sabbaths from the crea- 
tions# tion had been marked by the holy activity of the 

Creator, warming and shining in the sun, brightening in flowers, 
glowing and flowing in fountains and streams. As the Son of 
the Father, being in special relationship to him, Jesus claimed 
that just so he worked, and that his works were no more viola- 
tions of the Sabbath than were the works of the Father. Thie 
intensified their exasperation. He had broken the Sabbath law ; 
he had involved Jehovah in the crime ; and he had claimed 
equality with Jehovah. This last was the most specially aggra- 
vated offence. The words themselves, standing alone, hardly 
seem to justify this interpretation. The Jewish rulers must have 
heard something else from him before this, which gave this par- 
ticular complexion to this short statement. But their belief that 
h? did mean this, he himself proceeded to justify by the remark- 
able discourse which John has preserved, and which we give 
e? ttire : 

" Verily, I say to you, The Son can do nothing from himself, but what he 
sejth the Father doing: for what things He doeth, these also doeth the Son 
likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that He 
Himself doeth : and He will show him greater works than these, that ye may 
marvel. For as the Father raiseth the dead, and giveth life, even so the Son 
giveth life to whom he will. For the Father judgeth no one, but hath com- 
mitted all judgment to the Son : that all should know the Son, even as they 
know the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who 
hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word, and 
belie veth on Him that sent me, hath perpetual life, and doth not come into 
condemnation (or judgment), but hath passed from death unto life. Verily, 
verily, I say to you, An hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God : and they who hear shall live. For as the 
Father hath life in Himself, so also hath he given to the Son to have life in 
himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he 
is the Son of man. Marvel not at this, for an hour is coming in which all 
that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they who 
have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, 
unto the resurrection of judgment. 

" I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear I judge ; and my judgment 
is just ; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of Him who sent me. 
If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that 
beareth witness of me ; and ye know that the testimony which he testineth of 
me is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I 
receive not testimony from man : but these things I say that ye may be saved. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 



207 



He was the burning and shining lamp : ye were willing for a season to rejoice 
in his light. 

" But I have a greater witness than that of John : for the works which the 
Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, 
that the Father hath sent me. And the Father Himself, which hath sent me, 
hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor 
seen his shape. And ye have not His word abiding in you : for whom He 
hath sent, him ye believe not. 

" Ye search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think to have eternal life : and 
they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me that ye ma} 
have life. I receive not glory from men. But I know you, that ye have not 
the glory of God among yourselves. I have come in my Father's name, and 
ye receive me not : if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. 
How can ye believe, receiving glory one of another, and seek not the glory 
that cometh from the only God ? Do not think that I will accuse you to the 
Father : there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye have hoped. 
For had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me : for he wrote concern- 
ing me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" 



It would seem that no one can read this speech without being 
impressed with the thorough sincerity of the speaker. He be- 
lieved all he said.* He made assertions of himself, which, if 
true, are not only profound, and touching all the awful mysteries 
of life and eternity, but separate him from all other known 
human beings. 

He first assumes the fatherhood of the Deity. God is father. 
It is of His essence. He does not become a father by creating, 
but creates because He is a father. The human The Fatherhood of 
relationship between the begetter and the begotten God and the sonhood 
furnishes us with the idea, but it has always sub- 
sisted in God. Unbeginning fatherhood implies unbeginning 
sonhood. In point of fact, is there such a son ? Jesus not only 
declares that there now is, and consequently always has eternally 
been, but that he himself is that very son, not a son, as any other 
man may claim to be, but the Son of God. If the unbegun son, 
the always-existent son, then he does make himself equal with the 



* It must be remarked here, as else- 
where in the speeches of Jesus, that our 
comments are not made in order to form 
a system of theology. This is intended 
to be purely a history — a history of the 
deeds and speeches and consciousness of 
Jesus. We are concerned merely to dis- 



cover what he meant to say, and, having 
found that meaning, not to defend or to 
condemn, but to show the effect of the 
holding and the propagating of such 
thoughts upon the life of the man Je- 
sus, and perhaps upon the subsequent 
history of the world. 



208 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

Father, as there cannot be two Gods. The long-inculcated mono- 
theism of the Hebrews made it impossible for them to conceive 
two persons in one God, and it is probably a metaphysical im- 
practicability for any mind in which the idea of God is that of 
an infinite or even of a supreme Existence, to conceive two Gods. 
If, then, Jesus claims to be the Only Begotten, being one with 
the Father, the Father and the Son not having had precedent and 
subsequent existence, then he stands before all the laws of human 
thought the equal of God, the very God. Right or wrong, such 
eternity of sonship and such divine equality Jesus believed he 
held, and he acted and spoke always as we should a jpriori 
expect a person with such a belief to speak and act. 

He confirms the impression upon the minds of his enemies by 
statements made with the formula he always employed when he 
designed to make his asseverations specially solemn, " Yerily, 
verily ; " " Amen, amen." If they regarded him, the man Jesus, 
visible to them, as the sole and egoistic performer of such mira- 
cles as that which had been wrought at the House of Mercy, they 
were mistaken. He does them as the Son of God, and does what 
the Father shows him. He asserts that the subsistence of the 
existence of Father and Son is love. They are one in their love. 
Nothing is done by the Father which is not known to the Son. 
These things they had seen are but a small part of a stupendous 
whole. God is perpetually vivifying and revivifying, wherefore 
the Son must also be constantly discharging the quickening f unc 
tion of the life-power that is in him as the Son of God. Not only 
does all life proceed from him, but he is the judge of the living 
and the dead ; so that no honor is to go to God which does not 
come to Jesus as the Son. 

He asserts, furthermore, that those who hear his teachings, and 
thus believe in God by believing in him, have already everlast- 
ing life, — do not wait for death to introduce them 

Perpetual life. ° . . . 

thereinto, indeed have no judgment to pass, lhe 
hearing of the voice of the Son of God gives passage into a life 
that is perpetual, and that is wholly unaffected by the mere inci- 
dent of physical dissolution. But as touching the judgment of 
men, he asserts that that is placed in his hands, because he is the 
Son of Man. Man judges man. He that has had the trials, 
weaknesses, human emergencies, fearful despondencies, appetites 
and passions of a man, and therefore hath all human sympathy, is 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 209 

to pass judgment on the character and acts of men. He is God's 
equal in divine purity and man's equal in humaneness. 

The proof of the truth of what he says he rests upon several 
grounds. In the first place, he was not bearing egotistical testi- 
mony to himself. All that he said and did 

l-i-i i /-i i i -n i Jesus no egotist. 

brought glory to the great God, the Everlasting 
Father, and in this he was to be distinguished from the pseuds 
Messiahs. In the next place, they had sent to John, who was a 
resplendent light, and had from him received testimony to the 
Messiahship of Jesus, who, nevertheless, makes little of all human 
testimony to himself, even of John's ; and says that he was willing 
for them to hear John, that they might have all helps to their 
faith they could find, because he desired that they might be saved. 
But the really reliable external proof is the works he did, and 
the really reliable internal proof each man should have would be 
the voice of God, bearing witness in his soul that this Jesus had 
come out from God. But the Jews had silenced that voice. 

Without this subjective evidence men will not believe on him, 
no matter what quality and quantity of evidence may be adduced. 
For instance, they had the Scriptures of the Old 

m . -, . . , , , . , , Subjective evidence. 

I est anient m their midst, and studied them. 
They believed that the way to life lay mapped out therein. But 
those Scriptures, Jesus held, pointed clearly to him. He fulfilled 
them. And yet he does not glorify himself therefor, but he does 
glorify the Father. And yet they will not believe him. Let 
another come* glorifying himself, and although he fulfil no 
scripture, he will be received by these hard-minded men who 
desire to kill Jesus — not so much for blasphemy, nor for the vio- 
lation of the real Sabbath law, as for disregarding a legal Sab- 
bath. 

It is a deformity of the will. They had put a gloss on the 
Scripture. They had narrowed it to their national hopes. They 
looked for national deliverance and splendor, and for a Messiah 
who should bring grandeur to Judaism, and thus glory to God ; 
and they could not understand how God could be glorified and 
the Jewish nation not aggrandized. The very ground on which 
they reject him is the very ground of his proof that he had come 
out from God. 

* This assertion was verified by the I who were manifest impostors. Corn- 
crowds that subsequently followed those | pare Acts v. 36, 37. 
14 



210 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

And now he retorts upon them. They accuse him of viol at* 
ing one law of Moses. He accuses them of rejecting the writings 
of Moses bodily. He asserts that Moses wrote 
of Jesus. They did not understand and did not 
believe Moses. So Jesus may hardly expect them to believe him. 
If they extinguish their light they cannot see. If they truly 
believed in Moses it would be impossible to avoid believing in 
Jesus, if, as he asserts, the writings of Moses are full of Jesus. 
So, then, the greatest human authority to the Jews, — that under 
which their leaders are arraigning and endeavoring to try and 
convict Jesus that they may destroy him, — that very authority is 
against them. Moses, not Jesus, will rise up in the judgment and 
condemn them, for " if they believed not the writings of Moses, 
how should they believe the words of Jesus % " 

Whether they were a " Board of Jewish Magistracy," or merely 
leading Jewish magistrates contriving a conspiracy to crush him, 
disarmed by this powerful and impressive discourse, his persecu- 
tors were compelled to let him go. They could not gainsay the 
words he had uttered. 

But the battle had been begun. The assault was on the strong- 
hold of Pharisaism, namely, such rigorous observance of the Sab 
bath as should make it a burden to the people 
and an instrument of torture in the hands of the 
priesthood. Jesus had attacked that, and they determined to 
destroy him. He never sought and never declined a conflict for 
principle, but went steadily on his way, avoiding giving any 
ground of justification to the charge that he recklessly rushed 
against even men's foolish and hurtful prejudices, but never 
avoiding doing what was right because the popular prejudice 
was against it. 



CHAPTER II 



THE SABBATH QUESTION AGAIN. 



He departed for Galilee. It seems to have been the Sabbath 
after that on which he had healed the man at the Bethesda Pool, 
when, passing through a field of ripe barley,* Matt ^ . Mark .. . 
accompanied by his disciples, they began to pluck Lukevi. The sabbath 
the ears of grain and eat them to satisfy their 
hunger. The Sanhedrim at Jerusalem had entered upon a rigor- 
ous persecution of Jesus. He was to have no more peace. De- 
tectives dogged his footsteps everywhere. Some of them lurked 
about this field, and when they saw the disciples eating they came 
upon Jesus with the allegation that he and his company were 
violating the Sabbath. They could not accuse them of stealing, 
for the law, as stated in Deuteronomy (xxiii. 25), allowed a hun- 
gry man when passing through his neighbor's field to pluck what 
grain would appease his craving, while it forbade putting the 
sickle in. They did not care to make issue on such a charge : 
the Traditional Sabbath was the chosen ground of conflict. Ac- 
cording to its enactments a man might be stoned for plucking 
grain if he did it to desecrate the Sabbath, and not to remove 
hunger, as such plucking was a species of threshing. 

Jesus defended his disciples. They had done no wrong. He 
retorts upon their accusers, charging them with ignorance or wil- 
ful neglect of the Scriptures. He referred them 
to that model of piety, David, what he did in an 
emergency, how he took the shewbread, which stood in the Tem- 
ple as the sign of Jehovah's communion with the priests, which 
bread was given him by a distinguished priest and was shared by 
David with his followers. Here was not a question of tradition, 
but a distinct violation of a divinely ordered ceremonial, between 



The example of David. 



* We say barley, as wheat does not 
ripen in Galilee until a month later, 



this passage having occurred probably 
in April. 



212 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



whose observance and the preservation of life such men as 
Abiathar the priest, and David, God's elect, did not long hesi- 
tate.* 

But his enemies might have replied, and probably did reply, 

that that had nothing to do with this case ; that Sabbath profana- 

■ MA . t tion was the culmination of offences, the Sabbath 

Example of the priests. ' 

law being the greatest of the commandments. His 
reply to that is, that in the Temple the priests in carrying forward 
the ceremonials of worship do continually violate what all agreed 
was the distinct law of the Sabbath, as to outward observance, as, 
instead of resting, they were to do Temple-work, in preparing and 
presenting sacrifices. (Num. xxviii. 9.) But they were blameless. 
It was necessary for the maintenance of public worship. The 
Temple was greater than the Sabbath. He then made the re- 
markable assertion : " A greater thing than the Temple is here." 
It would seem to be a reference to himself, and the meaning to be 
that these disciples were in the discharge of religious duties in 
following him, and in a much higher sphere than the priests in 
the Temple, so that if these were not in fault, much more those 
were not to be blamed. 

Again he repeats to them the words of the prophet Hosea : f 
" I will have mercy and not sacrifice," teaching them that all 
God's laws are laid upon the basis of mercy and not pain-giving ; 
and that no amount of sacrifice in any shape, whether in offering 
victims upon the altar or in the afflicting of one's self, is at all 
acceptable to God unless the heart be full of love and mercy. 
And thus out of their law, and out of their most cherished his- 
tory, and out of their prophets, he confutes them. 

But he does not rest on that ; he lays down the memorable pro- 
position which is the key of the whole Sabbatic idea and arrange- 
Key to the Sabbath ment : " The Sabbath was made for man, and 
thought. no f man f or tfi e Sabbath" Whatever regulation 

for the observance of the Sabbath may be set up by human au- 



* Compare 1 Sam. xxi. ; also xxii. 
20-23 ; 2 Sam. viii. 17 ; 1 Chron. xv. 
11. In the first of these references 
Ahimelech is mentioned as the priest 
who gave the bread ; but in Mark ii. 26 
the occurrence is stated as in the days 
of Abiathar. Both are historically true. 
Ahimelech was the father, Abiathar the 



son. The latter became distinguished 
in the reign of David, and seems, from 
the Old Testament narratives, to have 
been present when the shewbread was 
given by his father to David. 

f See Hosea vi. 6, with which com- 
pare the beautiful words in 1 Samuel 
xv. 22. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION AGAIN. 213 

thority, winch fails to make it a delight, a profit, a culture in 
na PP3 r goodness, is wholly invalid and is to be rejected. Man is 
not to be the slave of the Sabbath ; the Sabbath is to be the ser- 
vant of man. Man is greater than the Sabbath. He rules it. 
And then Jesus added those other words, which he connects with 
the former by logical process : " Wherefore the Son of Man is 
Lord of the Sabbath-day" He who is the Consummate Man, who 
is Essential Manhood, who is to exist in the minds of the coming 
ages as the Representative Man, he, in virtue of this Manness, is 
the Ruler of the Sabbath-day, aud has a right to say what may 
be done and what may not be done on the Sabbath. It will be 
seen from this that he made no intimation of the abrogation of 
the Sabbath ; no man abrogates a kingdom by declaring himself 
king. He reaffirms it. He re-establishes it by removing it from 
the wretched circumstances of tradition and placing it where 
God originally intended it, on the rational basis of being the sup- 
ply for a demand widely created in man. Now, it commends 
itself to the reason of men. Now, we can take the ideas of Jesus 
and by their light survey the Sabbath as an institution of divine 
beneficence. If it be not that, it is a curse. 

The battle on the Sabbath question continued to be urged by 
the Pharisees and bravely fought by Jesus. He shrank from 
none of its issues. He was retiring into Galilee. __ „ .. __ . . 

o Matt. xn. ; Mark w. ; 

On the very next Sabbath after the scene in the Luke vi. The battle 
barley-field he entered into a synagogue. It is con mue * 
not certain in what town this particular synagogue was located. 
Some infer from Mark iii. 1 that it was Capernaum, but there 
is no authority for this, and the absence of the article in the 
original slightly favors the opinion that it was some other syn- 
agogue. As his custom was, he began to teach the people when 
occasion for exhortation was given. The intense hatred of the 
Pharisaic party, and their conspiracy to crush him, reappear in a. 
still more significant manner. It seems to have been arranged 
that there should be present a man who had an arm that had been 
withered by a wound or by disease, that they might see whether 
Jesus would heal on the Sabbath. 

That they might direct the attention of Jesus to this afflicted 
man, the Scribes and Pharisees asked him : " Is Question of healing 
it lawful to heal on the Sabbath-days ? " Accord- on the Sabbatb - 
ing to the strictest teaching of their school it was not. Sham- 



214 



SECOHD AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



mai, the preceptor of the Great Hillel,* and one of the earliest 
founders of their sect, had distinctly laid down the law : " Let no 
one console the sick nor visit the mourning on the Sabbath-day.'"* 
They might therefore accuse Jesus if he healed on the sacred 
day. Reading their intents, Jesus said to the man with the with- 
ered hand : " Rise and stand forth in the midst." And the man f 
arose and took a conspicuous position. It is to be noticed that 
when a man has a real malady, and there appears any prospect of 
relief, how indifferent he becomes to all the philosophical theories 
of the modes of treatment, and how absorbed in the practical 
matter of fact in which his personal comfort is most deeply con- 
cerned. 

This was a fine stroke upon the part of Jesus. It held up the 
sufferer to the gaze of the assembly. It appealed to the humanity 
of the persecutors, and invited the sympathy of 
the spectators. Jesus then turned upon his pur- 
suers with this movement. They had narrowed the question to 
the doing or the not doing on the Sabbath. By a counter-ques- 
tion he lifted the whole subject to a loftier light : " Is it lawful 
to do good on the Sabbath-days, or to do evil f to save or destroy ? " 
The question was double-edged: on one side it cut the knot of 
their question ; on the other side it smote them. They were filled 
with hatred. They were pursuing him on the Sabbath-day, trying 
to kill him. He was about works of goodness, giving life, and 
more life, — making life joyful that had been almost intolerable. 
" Now, who will be to be blamed, you who are full of murderous 
intent, or I, if I heal this sufferer ? " They were silenced. 

But he pushed the question home to them : " Suppose one of 
you owned a single sheep, and on the Sabbath it should fall into 
a cistern ; would he not lay hold upon him and pull him out ? 



A counter-question. 



* Hillel was held in the very highest 
esteem as the most learned in the laws 
of the Jews. He was more liberal than 
his master Shammai, and the differ- 
ences of their teaching led their disci- 
ples to blows, which resulted in the 
death of several persons. Hillel is re- 
ported by some as the grandfather of 
that Gamaliel who was preceptor to 
Saul of Tarsus. 

f St. Jerome, who translated the 



"Gospel according to the Hebrews" 
(an apocryphal book, seemingly an adul- 
terated version of St. Matthew, and 
much in use among the Nazarenes and 
Ebionites), says that this man was a 
stone-mason, and told his occupation to 
Jesus, adding that he was compelled to 
obtain his food by the labor of his 
hands, and prayed Jesus to heal him, 
that he might no longer basely beg his 
bread. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION AGAIN. 215 

A man is much better than a sheep. Wherefore to do good 
on the Sabbath is lawful." It appears from An ad iwmuvem 
this, that in the days of Jesus, this pulling of <i uestion - 
a sheep out of the pit on the Sabbath was a thing allowed 
amongst them ; else this ad hominem appeal had had no force. 
Subsequently it was, in express terms, forbidden in the Gemara ; 
and only permitted to lay planks for the animal to come out ! 
Stier suggests that tins explicit regulation was made because of 
the words of Jesus. Bat the puritanic instinct would dominate, 
holding on to the property while appearing very sanctimonious 
about the moral law. 

His enemies were still silent. Their hardness towards the suf- 
ferer, their hatred towards himself, their spiritual blindness in 
not seeing the merciful intent of all moral law, 
aroused mingled feelings in Jesus. He was angry The cureof thewith - 

» to ° J eredhand. 

and was sorry. He exhibited in the most sur- 
passing manner that which appears in all noble souls, a tender- 
ness for the sinful man, while the sin is hated. But, turning 
toward the waiting patient, he said, " Stretch forth thy hand." 
The man obeyed. He lifted it. It was as whole as the other 
arm. The cure was instantaneous and complete. It was a dis- 
play of mighty power and goodness. He flung himself into the 
hands of his foes to save this unknown sufferer. No selfishness 
held him. He saw his peril, but he chose to face his fate rather 
than turn from a work of beneficence standing before him to be 
done. 

The Pharisees were filled with rage at this new, bold, defiant 
disregard of their traditions. If their Sabbath laws could be set 
aside thus, then was their authority at an end. The blasphemy 
of two weeks ago they might overlook ; the apparent violation of 
the Sabbath by his disciples they might forgive, as it had not been 
done by him in person ; but this distinct avowal that their tra- 
dition was of no force was intolerable : they hated him. But 
what could they do with him? He had not mixed medicines to 
give the sick. He had made no journeys to hunt up and console 
sufferers, in the simple way of ordinary Jewish duty. He had 
gone into the synagogue, and simply said to a man, " Stretch 
forth thy hand." It seemed impracticable to make a judicial 
case on such ground. They were as much puzzled as they were 
enraged ; and so they went out and took counsel with the Hero- 



216 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

dians, how they might compass the destruction of him whose 
crime was the healing of a fellow-man on the Sabbath-day. 

" The Herodians " are mentioned several times by the New- 
Testament historians. They were those who were the open and 
avowed political adherents to the family of the 

The Herodians. \ . J 

Herods, m whose interest they were ready to 
make any combination, and use any of the ecclesiastical parties 
and theological sects that might be in existence from time to time. 
They were Jews more influenced by political than by religious 
considerations. The independent nationality of the Jews was the 
first and last consideration with them. They believed that the 
Herodian family had the talent and the ambition to make head 
against the Roman power, and so were willing to submit to them, 
although they were of foreign origin, and not strict observers of 
the Mosaic ritual. If they were lending their influence to a do- 
mestic tyranny, they were thus at least saved from a direct 
heathen domination. On this ground some of the Pharisees would 
be of their party. Then there were those who might be called 
liberal Jews, who had become quite lax in their belief in the 
dogmas of Judaism and in the observance of its stringent ceremo- 
nials. They favored the Herods as being the most promising 
agents in bringing about a combination of the Hebrew faith with 
the heathen civilization. On this ground some of the Sadducees 
would be of their party. Thus the leading sects would be found 
at different times co-operating with the Herodians, and the Hero- 
dians using either of these sects, as the occasion might seem to 
indicate it could be used, for increase of political power. 

In this particular case the popularity of Jesus was so great that 
the Pharisees could not openly attack him. The Herodians might 
be induced to employ their influence with Herod to have Jesus 
put out of the way on political grounds. 

Discovering the formation of this powerful conspiracy against 

him, Jesus retired with his disciples to the shore of the Lake of 

Gennesaret. Yast crowds followed him, not mere- 

crowds follow jesus. i Y f rom t he neighboring district of Galilee, but 

Markiii. ; Matthew xiL J n , 

also from Judaea generally, as well as from the 
city of Jerusalem, and even from Idumgea on the south, and from 
Perea beyond the Jordan, and from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon 
on the north-west. It was the fame of his miracles that drew 
them. Among the orientals, to this day, the name and fame of a 



THE SABBATH QUESTION AGAIN. 217 

prophet or a miracle- worker will agitate large sections of country, 
and people will abandon their ordinary employments to follow 
him. Jesus healed their diseased people and restored their insane. 
All had the benefit of his marvellous power and surpassing good- 
ness. When those who had " unclean spirits " cried out to him, 
" Thou art the Son of God," addressing him in language that ac- 
knowledged him as the Messiah, he rebuked them, and very strictly 
charged all who received his favor to abstain from proclaiming 
him. It would seem to have been his intent to do all the good 
he could, scattering his blessings with royal bounty, but to do this 
unobtrusively, so as not to appear to provoke a controversy with 
his ecclesiastical and political enemies. Whenever they provoked 
it he never shrank, but met them promptly, skilfully, and with 
blows aimed so adroitly and delivered so powerfully that the pop- 
ulace rejoiced in the discomfiture of the rulers. In all other par- 
ticulars he so carefully avoided publicity and general popularity 
that to one of his biographers at least (Mark iii. IT) were recalled 
the striking words of Isaiah (xlii. 1-4) : " Behold my servant whom 
I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth : I have put 
my spirit upon him ; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations. 
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the 
street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax 
shall he not quench." To us at a distance this reticence, with this 
power, seems to be marvellous. To those who were in daily and 
full sight of both it must have produced a wonderful impression. 
So great was the crowd that his friends procured for him a 
small boat, which could be used as a kind of movable pulpit, so 
that from it he could preach to the people on the 

,! -i . -i'-i-i-it i i • A movable pulpit. 

beach at a distance which should not render his 
voice inaudible, while it should save him from the pressure of the 
crowd. There might also have been the additional reason of being 
able to go quickly from one side of the lake to the other, and thus 
elude the machinations of his enemies. 



CHAPTEK III. 



THE TWELVE. 



It was a crisis with Jesus. He had attained immeuse popular- 
ity with the masses, and had aroused the deadly hatred of power- 
a crisis. Matthew ful ecclesiastics and politicians. The posture of 
x.; Mark in.; Lukevi. ^-g a ff a i rs was Slicn that it became him to move 

with great caution, and to act with great despatch. We have 
learned what his opinions of himself were, and have seen some- 
thing of his character by his words and acts in the emergencies 
into which his career brought him. He must have had the sa- 
gacity to see now that there was only one of two courses before 
him : to go forward in what he believed to be the establishing of 
the kingdom of God, or to retreat, give up the mission, and retire 
into the utmost privacy and draw out an insignificant life, and 
leave the world merely a torso of a memory. To do the former 
was certain death ; to do the latter was an abandonment of the 
Messiahship. 

Out of Capernaum he went to a neighboring mountain alone, 
and spent the night, we must suppose, in looking the dread near 
a night in a moun- future in the face. He must have canvassed all 
tain * the probabilities on both sides. It must have 

been a night of torture to him. But he saw his way clear, and 
came forth in the morning prepared to walk it at all hazards. He 
must not take measures to avoid the supreme fate, if death were 
necessary to achieve the great result he had set before himself as 
the mission of his life. But he must not both die and fail. He 
must manage himself and his affairs in such a manner that before 
his enemies could kill him he should have so implanted the germ 
of his doctrines in the world that it would grow after his depar- 
ture. He must so instruct others in the kingdom of God that 
they might be able to place the torch of light in the upturned 
hands of the coming generations. He must so breathe his spirit 
into other souls that even when dead he could through them 
cause his religion to live and grow in the hearts of men. 



THE TWELVE. 219 

When the morning came he called together all those who, from 
whatever motive, had followed him, or shown attachment to his 
person, or interest in his movements. And from 

A Selection of the Twelve. 

them he set apart twelve men, who were to be 
near his person, to be carefully instructed in his doctrine, to re- 
ceive of his power to cure physical and mental maladies, and to 
be representatives to the world of the principles he had taught. 
It will be interesting to make a study of the character of each of 
the men whom Jesus would put in this extraordinary position, the 
men whom his choice has made immortal. We shall take them 
in the order in which they are named in the sixth chapter of 
Luke, calling attention to the fact that they are there catalogued 
in pairs, as we are informed in the sixth chapter of Mark they 
were sent out " by two and two." It will also be noticed that the 
first seven had received some kind of call from Jesus before this 
definite setting apart to the Apostleship. 

1. At the head of the list stands the name of Simon I., whom 
Jesus named Peter. Simon, T&atfij signifies " hearer." Kr)$as, Ce- 
phas, or JTerpo?, Peter, signifies " rock." It will 
be recollected that when Jesus first saw him this 
name was given the Apostle. (Matt. xvi. 18.) His father's name was 
Jonas ; his mother's name, according to tradition, was Johanna. 
He resided originally at Bethsaida, and afterward in his own house, 
or the house of his mother-in-law, in Capernaum. (Luke xiv. 38.) 
He was brought up to his father's occupation ; he was a fisherman 
on the lake of Tiberias. This was not a very exalted employment, 
nor was it degrading. It developed his corn-age, his watchfulness, 
his fortitude, in the self -denying labors on the sea, the night-watches, 
the frequent and trying postponements which men who make 
their livelihood by fishing often encounter. He became a rough, 
ready, impetuous, hard man. He had the vices of his class. He 
was not always truthful, and he was profane. We judge these to 
have been the vices of his youth, as we generally find that when 
a fierce temptation assails a man in advanced life it brings out 
his earliest vices. When Peter's crisis came, in the hour of his 
Master's trial, he used both falsehood and profanity for his own 
safety. (John xviii. 15, 17, 25-27.) He was not a wholly unedu- 
cated man.* He must have enjoyed the benefit of the public 

* Smith well remarks that the state- I perceived that they (Peter and John) 
ment in Acts iy. 13, that " the council I were unlearned and ignorant men," is 



220 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 



schools maintained by the community in which he lived, which 
the young were compelled to attend, according to a law enacted 
by Simon Ben-Shelach, one of the great leaders of the Pharisaic 
party under the Asmonean dynasty. The Holy Scriptures and the 
history of his country he probably knew from his earliest child- 
hood. The regular attendance upon the synagogue service would 
have been a species of education. And these remarks apply to 
all the disciples. Moreover, in the case of Peter there was the 
culture which came from trade and intercourse with cultivated 
foreigners. He seems to have picked up some rudimental knowl- 
edge of the Greek tongue, and to have profited generally by 
mingling with his fellow-men of diverse education. 

He was not a very poor man. His father, Jonas, was a person 
in good circumstances. Fishing was lucrative. The great popu- 
lation of the district, the influx of people from among the culti- 
vated heathen, and the pleasure-seekers whom the beauty of the 
lake attracted, must have afforded a good market. He may have 
also acquired money by his marriage, as the house to which he 
invited Jesus and his fellow-disciples would seem to have been 
roomy, and to have been his property, or that of his mother-in- 
law. He makes mention of the sacrifices which he had incurred 
to follow his Master, and Jesus does not deny that they were 
great.* Peter seems to have married in early life, and to have 
been a devoted and affectionate husband. Clement of Alexan- 
dria, whose testimony is made more valuable by the fact that he 
was connected with the church founded by St. Mark, tells us from 
very ancient traditions, as other historians do, that the name of 
Peter's wife was Perpetua, by whom he had a daughter, and per- 
haps other children, and that she suffered martyrdom. Paul 
informs us that Peter was accustomed to be accompanied by his 
wife on his apostolic journeys. 

The quality Peter most lacked is precisely that which seems to 
be indicated by his name, firmness. In no way does the word 
"rock" recall Peter, except as it reminds us of his hardness. 



not at all incompatible with the state- 
ment made above, and the translation 
of this passage in the authorized version 
is rather exaggerated, the word ren- 
dered "unlearned" being rather equiv- 
alent to "laymen" — men of ordinary 



education, not specially trained in th$ 
schools of the rabbis — so that the term 
might have been applied to a man thor 
oughly conversant with the Scriptures. 
* Matt. xix. 27. 



THE TWELVE. 



221 



He was hard and unstable. He asked Jesus to invite him to 
come to him on the water, and when bidden he started off boldly, 
soon lost courage, and began to sink.* At the last supper which 
Jesus had with his apostles, the Master offered to wash the feet 
of his disciples as a symbol. Peter vehemently refused, but at a 
word from Jesus impetuously thrust forward his hands and his 
head.f When his Master was betrayed he frantically undertook, 
single-handed, to fight the whole body of Tloman soldiers ; but 
when Jesus ordered him to put up his sword he fled, and left his 
Master in the hands of his foes4 With another disciple he fol- 
lowed Jesus into the palace of the high-priest, and when the 
crisis came he denied all knowledge of his Master, and did this 
with oaths and vehement protestations. § After the Christian 
society began to take form, he was in the front of the movement 
to baptize converted Gentiles ; but when opposition came from 
the Judaizing element in the Christian community, he inglorious- 
ly abandoned his position.] 

And yet there was something so daring and dashing, so eagle 
swift, so unthoughtful of consequences, so sympathetic and elas- 
tic in this man, as to make him most receptive of such spiritual 
influences as the character of Jesus would produce upon the 
human heart, and most capable of being the ardent pioneer 
preacher of a new faith. He led the band of Apostles as a bold 
chieftain would his clan. 

2. The next Apostle in the catalogue is Andrew, whose name is 
Greek, 'AvSpeas, and signifies "manly." He may have had a 
Hebrew name, and this Greek surname been 
given him as indicative of the manliness of his 
spirit. The name, we know, was in use among the later Jews.1" 
Andrew may have been a Hellenist on his mother's side, a con- 
jecture perhaps favored by the circumstance of his introducing 
to Jesus certain Grecians who desired to see the Great Master.** 
His position in the New-Testament history is not nearly so im- 
portant as that of his brother Peter; but the few glimpses we catch 
of him show the eager spirit of one who is anxious for the spir- 
itual welfare of others, and who has a simple manly trust in his 



* Matt. xiv. 28-30. 

f John xiii. 6, 8, 9. 

% John xviii. 10 ; Matt. xxvi. 56. 

§ John xviii. 15, 17, 25-27. 



| Acts x. 47, 48. 
Tf Josephus, Ant., xii. 2, 2. 
** John xii. 22. See also p. 114 of 
this book. 



222 SECOND ANT) THIED PASSOVEE IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

great spiritual Leader. He had been a disciple of John the Bap- 
tist, but he became one of the earliest followers of Jesus, to 
which course he was prompted by John's expressly pointing out 
Jesus as " the Lamb of God." * His earliest act as a follower of 
Jesus was his bringing his brother Peter to the newly found Mas- 
ter. He is mentioned with three other disciples as being in a 
confidential interview with Jesus, making inquiries concerning 
the destruction of the holy city.f He also appears in connec- 
tion with the history of the feeding of the five thousand.;}: Be- 
yond this there appears no reference to Andrew. 

3. The third Apostle is James, whom we designate as James I., 

to distinguish him from James the son of Alphseus. There were 

perhaps eight of this name mentioned in the New 

James I. rn ' ri 

Testament Scriptures. As held by the Apostles 
it was " Jacob," and it has been noticed that in them it reappears 
for the first time since it was borne by the Patriarch himself. 
The Greeks called it 'Ia/caffo?, accenting the first syllable, and 
the Latins Jacobus, probably accented as the Greek name, since 
the Italian is Giacomo, or Iacomo. In Spanish it took two forms, 
Iago and Xayme, or Jayme, pronounced Hayme, with strong ini- 
tial guttural. In French it became Jacques and Jame, from which 
the transition is easy to our James. It exists in WyclifiVs Bible, 
1381. § In the East, St. James is still St. Jacob, Mar Yakoob. 

This James was the son of Zebedee, a well-to-do fisherman on 
the Lake of Galilee. He was the brother of that John who, 
according to his own account, became such a favorite with his 
Master. The year before his appointment to the Apostolic col- 
lege he had been called to be a disciple of Jesus. || As we trace 
the history of Jesus we shall find James admitted to the raising 
of Jairus's daughter,*! and also made one of the three witnesses 
to the Transfiguration.** His furious temper is shown in his de- 
sire to call down fire from heaven to destroy a Samaritan village.ff 
The ambition of himself and his brother John is shown in their 
request, through their mother, to be promoted to the joint premier- 
ship in the new kingdom which they believed Jesus as the Messiah 

* John i. 36. 1 Mark i. 20. 

f Mark xiii. 3. I IF Mark v. 37 ; Luke viii. 51. 

% John xv. 9. ** Matt. xvii. 1 ; Luke ix. 3a 

§ For this see a full note by Mr. f Luke ix. 54. 

Grove, in Smith's Dictionary. 



THE TWELVE. 223 

was about to inaugurate.* He was present at the agony in the 
garden of Gethseniane,f and is mentioned in connection with 
the Ascension.;): In the year 44, as it is supposed, about the time 
of the Passover, he was put to death by Herod Agrippa, a bigoted 
Pharisee, who slew James with the sword,§ according to the 
Jewish law, that if seducers to a strange worship were few, they 
should be stoned ; if many, they should be beheaded. 

It has been noticed that earlier in the history John is mentioned 
as the brother of James, showing the superior age or position of 
the latter ; but in the later history the place of honor is assigned 
to John by calling James his brother. James was the first of the 
Apostles to suffer martyrdom. 

4. John, son of Zebedee by Salome, being brother to James, is 
or- linarily mentioned with him, as Andrew is with Peter. These 
f o" ir were the leading spirits of the body of the 
dirciples. To James and John Jesus gave the 
name pin-a^a, Boan'erget's, the Galilsean pronunciation of the 
Syro-Chaliee words yv] "vjs, JBenai Regaz, " Sons of Commotion," 
or " Sons of Thunder," probably given because of their impetuous 
temper. The name John has its equivalent in Theodore, meaning 
" the sift of God." 

In the New-Testament memoirs he is represented as the inti- 
mate friend and almost constant companion of Simon Peter, and 
as the most single-minded and devoted of all the men who loved 
and followed Jesus. He had been brought up to a life of labor, 
but does not seem to have come from the very poorest class. His 
father, Zebedee, and mother, Salome, were above many of their 
fellow-citizens. We hear that the father employed "hired ser- 
vants " on his fisheries (Mark i. 20) ; that probably after his death 
the mother had some substance (Luke viii. 3), and that John him- 
self had " his own house." (John xix. 27.) He had had the usual 
instruction of Jewish lads, had gained what a quick boy would 
gather from kis regular religious visits to the Temple, and had 
probably sympathized with the occasional political movements 
that contemplated the throwing off the Roman yoke from the 
Hebrew neck. His name was one which began to be given to 
children born in the sacerdotal circles, and was probably rendered 



* Mark x. 35. I % Acts i 13. 

f Matt. xxvi. 37. | § Acts xii 1. 



224: SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

all the more popular by the circumstances of marvel which had 
attended the birth of John the Baptist, and by the general hope 
that " God's gift," Jehovah's special gift of grace, the Messiah, 
was about to be bestowed upon the world. 

John must have been quite young when called to the Aposto- 
late, as we learn that he was still alive in the days of the Emperor 
Trajan. The appearance of John the Baptist at Jordan roused 
the religious fervor of the young man, who became a disciple of 
his namesake. He was an earnest seeker after truth, and this led 
him to follow Jesus on John's saying that he was the Lamb of God 
that taketh away the sins of the world, and this predominant 
characteristic, notwithstanding his faults of temper, won him the 
love of Jesus. With Peter and James we find him in the cham- 
ber where the dead daughter of Jairus was brought to life, amid 
the dazzling splendors of the Transfiguration, at the solemn an- 
nouncement of the impending destruction of the holy city, in the 
garden of Gethsemane, at the fearful agony, and near the cross 
as Jesus expired. He had nothing of that soft effeminate manner 
which is so usually assigned to him. 

He never married. He was very passionate, narrow-minded, 
ambitious, and vain, as is shown in his hatred of the Samaritans, 
his desire to consume a village with fire, his attempt to extort a 
pledge from Jesus to share the highest honors of the new dynasty 
between himself and his brother, and the way he alludes to him- 
self in his writings. But he loved the truth, and he loved Jesus 
with a supreme passion, which subsequently ripened and mellowed 
his character into exceeding sweetness and beauty. And Jesus 
loved him. He leaned on the bosom of the Master at the Last 
Supper, and received from him the tender consignment of his 
mother when the Master died. To him and Peter, Mary of Mag- 
dala brought the news of the resurrection of Jesus. Although 
Peter had denied the Lord, the old friendship survived, and the 
penitent friend was received again with warmth. John grew out 
of his narrowness so much as to lose all his prejudices against the 
Samaritans, and to become willing to receive them into the Chris-* 
tian society, in which his subsequent position was one of honor 
and usefulness, organizing, teaching, encouraging. There is 
much legendary notice of his latest years, some very trivial and 
some very beautiful, but not much that is reliable or worth men- 
tioning in a history. 



THE TWELVE. 



225 



5. The Apostles are catalogued in groups of fours, Simon Peter 
being at the head of the first, and Philip of the second quaternion. 
Of this Apostle the Gospels give us very slight 
memorials. He is said to have been of Bethsaida, 
the city of Andrew and Peter, whether a native or inhabitant 
does not appear.* It is to be noticed that Jesus is said to have 
found him (John i. 43), as though he had been seeking him, and 
that to Philip, first of all the Apostles, does he address that re- 
markable appeal, " Follow me," which was to become the terms 
of Christian discipleship for all succeeding ages. He was quite 
eager to declare the discovery he had made of the character of 
Jesus to Nathanael, with whom he seems to have been in relations 
of intimacy, both being men of earnest simple-heartedness, and both 
looking for the Deliverer. Yet the faith of Philip was not such 
as to make him ready to expect any miraculous display. At the 
feeding of the great multitude, Jesus addressed Philip specially, 
as to how to provide food for so large a number : f and this he 
did " to try him." It does not easily appear why this should have 
been done, as Philip does not seem strikingly weak in the faith 
which soars above the externals, as Chrysostom suggests. But his 
calculation of the money in hand and the cost of feeding such a 
multitude shows that Philip was not expecting a miracle. 

The next glimpse we have of him is in John xii., where we are 
told that certain Greeks who had come up to the feast had a great 
desire to see Jesus, and, attracted probably by the Greek form of 
Philip's name, applied to him to introduce them to his Master. 
With a modesty to be noticed, Philip first goes to his friend 
Andrew, and they together convey to Jesus an expression of the 
desire of the Greeks. He must have heard the voice from heaven 
which replied to the remarkably striking words of Jesus, which 
we shall consider when we reach them in the regular narrative. 
Philip probably brooded over the address, " Father, save me ! 
Father, glorify thy name ! " and so when, in his latest interviews 
with his disciples, Jesus spoke of going to the "Father," the 



* John i. 44. Greswell calls attention 
to John's use of the prepositions a-wo 
and e£ , the former meaning an inhabi- 
tant, and the latter a native of the place 
mentioned. {Dissert, xxxii.) The for- 
mer is the preposition used in this 
But Alford thinks this dis- 

15 



tinction futile. ( Or. Test. , in loco. ) 

f John vi. 5. Bengel, on this pas- 
sage, suggests that Philip was one of 
the disciples to whom the domestic ar- 
rangements for tlfe company were com- 
mitted. See p. 115, ante. 



226 



SECOND AND THTJRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



Nathanael. 



childlike simplicity of Philip gave vent to the request, u Lord 
show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." 

This is the last we see of Philip, unless we suppose him to have 
been one of the two unnamed disciples in that group to whom 
Jesus is said to have exhibited himself after his resurrection, in a 
scene described in John's last chapter. 

6. Of the excellent Nathanael, who was of Cana in Galilee, 
only two notices are made, both in John's Gospel : one in the 

early ministry of Jesus, and one after his resur- 
rection. When Philip was first called by Jesus, 
shortly after the terrible passage of his temptation, he went im- 
mediately in search of his friend Nathanael, whom he brought to 
the person announced by John the Baptist as the Messiah. Upon 
sight, Jesus declared Kathanael to be " an Israelite indeed, in 
whom was no guile." (John i. 47.) And then no more mention 
is made of him until after the resurrection, when he is named in 
the company of the fishermen who had such a fruitless night of 
toil, to be followed by a morning in which the crucified and buried 
Master should reveal himself to them. (John xxi. 2.) 

And this is all that is said of this guileless man whom Jesus so 
commended. But, being thus associated with the chief of the 
Apostles, and praised above them all by the Master of the com- 
pany, it is perplexing to find so little mention of Nat hanael. This 
has led to the belief that Bartholomew is the same as Nathanaei, 
the former signifying son of Tholmai, being a surname of the lat- 
ter, as Barjonas was of Simon. The reason assigned for this be- 
lief is, that John mentions Nathanael twice and Bartholomew 
never, while the name of Bartholomew occurs in the other three 
Gospels, but that of Nathanael is totally omitted. In John, 
Natlianael is associated with Philip in both instances, while in 
the other gospels Bartholomew is in like manner always associated 
with Philip.* 

If Nathanael and Bartholomew be the same individual,! he was 
associated after the ascension with the body of the Apostles, as 
we learn from Acts i. 13. 

7. Matthew is the surname of Levi. He calls himself " the 
publican," in his own Gospel, but is not so called by the other 



> * See Matt. x. 3 ; Mark iii. 18 ; and 
Luke vi. 14 ; and p. 119, ante. 
\ St. Augustine denies that Nathanael 



was an Apostle; so does St. Gregory. 
Others have held that Nathanael and 
Bartholomew were different persons. 



THE TWELVE. 227 

biographers. "We learn that he was the son of Alphgeus. He 
must have been a man of low estate and of gen- 

. , .. , Levi or Matthew. 

eral bad character, otherwise he would not have 
accepted the position of sub-collector of taxes, a post filled only 
by the meanest of the Jews. The real publican was one who 
farmed the taxes of a province, paying so much to the empire for 
the privilege. The sub-collectors (portitores) were those to whom 
the collection of the taxes was relet. The former were generally 
Roman knights ; the latter, mercenary inhabitants of the province, 
who made all they could by oppressing the people. In the case 
of a Jew, a jportitor was a special object of dislike, as he kept 
before the Hebrew mind perpetually the sign of the national 
degradation. Of course no Jew of any respectability would ac- 
cept such an odious office. Matthew (x. 3) frankly acknowledges 
that he had fallen that low, a circumstance which the other biog- 
raphers refrain from mentioning. 

Of this man, in whom Jesus saw something of a religious ele- 
ment, and whom he called to be one of the earliest and chief 
propagators of his religion, this is all we know, except that he 
contributed one of the four collections of Memorabilia of his 
great Master, upon which the world depends for its knowledge of 
Jesus. His reticence concerning himself is a remarkable display of 
modesty in a biographer who had every temptation and occasion 
to glorify himself as being so intimately associated with his hero. 

8. The last of the second quaternion of Apostles was Thomas, 
who is coupled with Matthew in Matt. x. 3, Mark iii. 18, and Luke 
vi. 15. His name in Hebrew signifies "twin," 
and is so translated by John, who calls him Didy- 
mus, which is the Greek for " a twin." It is not known where he 
was born. A tradition, however, indicates Antioch as the place. 
There are three prominent incidents mentioned of his connection 
with the history of Jesus. When his Master determined to go to 
Bethany, upon learning that Lazarus was dead, Thomas appealed 
to his colleagues to accompany Jesus and share his peril on a jour- 
ney which Thomas believed would prove ruinous to the whole 
party. (John xi. 16.) At the Last Supper, when Jesus had been 
6peaking in an exalted and poetic strain of his departure into the 
realms of the unseen world, Thomas showed his prosy, incredu- 
lous nature by saying, " Lord, we know not whither thou goest, 
and how can we know the way ? " (John xiv. 5.) After the Cru- 



228 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

cifixion his brother Apostles reported to him that they had seen 
Jesus. (John xx. 25.) He broke into the vehement exclama- 
tion, " Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and 
put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into 
Ins side, I will not believe." 

These incidents show that he was skeptical, slow to believe, 
demanding unusual proofs, — that he was not sanguine, but rather 
despondent, — and that he loved Jesus ardently. Although he re- 
garded the journey to Bethany as almost certain destruction, his 
love for Jesus prompted him to go and die with him. Although 
he could see nothing before him in the future, and his practical, 
matter-of-fact mind could not appreciate the spiritual, and dark- 
ness lay on the path into the unseen world, his love for Jesus 
made him long to know how to follow him in those paths which 
the Master dimly indicated. Although he would not believe 
that Jesus had risen from the dead, and although he demanded 
what at first sight seems to be a most gross and repulsive method 
of conviction, the very form in which he puts it shows how the 
person of Jesus, in the mangled condition in which he had last 
seen it, was the most affecting picture of all things retained by his 
memory. 

Beyond this we know nothing, but that he was with the Apostles 
after the Ascension. (Acts i. 13.) 

9. In the lead of the last class of the Apostles is the other 
James, whom we distinguish as James II. He is also called 
James the Less. He was the son of Mary by 
Alphseus, who was brother of Joseph, whom John 
calls Clopas, and thus cousin to Jesus. I am satisfied that this 
James was not the one who is called " the brother of the Lord." 
None of the children born of Mary to Joseph after the birth of 
Jesus became believers in him until after the resurrection. They 
were not, therefore, among the Apostles. On one occasion they 
became indignant at him for what they considered his intemperate 
zeal and excessive labors in preaching, so much so that they 
were going to lay hold on him and compel him to suspend his 
work. (Mark iii. 20,21*31.) This James, the Apostle, was in- 
side the house while that James, the brother, stood outside with 
his mother. During the lifetime of Jesus James II. is no more 
seen, except at this organization of the Apostolatc, when he 
and his brother Jude are in the catalogue of the twelve. 



THE TWELVE. 



229 



After the Resurrection he continued with the Apostles, and is sa 
mentioned. 

Twenty-four years afterward we find him still at Jerusalem, and 
now holding a high position and discharging important ecclesiasti- 
cal functions. Saul of Tarsus had "been a convert to Jesus by the 
space of seventeen years, and then visited Jerusalem, where he was 
introduced to the Christian brethren by Barnabas, and found 
James sharing the management of the infant society with Peter. 
All allusions to him afterwards seem to set him forth as the Bishop 
at Jerusalem, that is, as chief pastor of the congregation and 
President of the Apostolic Council.* A large number of quota- 
tions might be made from the earliest Christian writers confirm- 
ing this view. 

So excellent was the character of this man that he obtained 
among his countrymen the title which Aristides won from the 
Greeks, "the Just." He is represented as being held in great 
reverence by the Jews, notwithstanding his connection with the 
Christian sect. He was a most strict and exemplary observer of 
all the Jewish rites and ceremonies, so much so that there is a 
tradition, hardly probable as to the fact, but showing his lofty 
reputation, that he was allowed to enter the holiest place. A 
stringent ritualist himself, he was so very liberal that he did not 
believe the yoke and burden of Leviticism should be laid on new 
converts to the Christian faith who came in from among the Gen- 
tiles. He had a practical mind, and was manifestly the man of 
common sense among the Apostles, as his admirable " Epistle " 
shows. That letter reminds us of his work in Jerusalem, looking 
after the Jewish converts, both resident and visitors. 

There is a tradition, handed down from Hegesippus, a Christian 
of Jewish origin, who lived in the second century, as to the man- 
ner of the life and the mode of the death of James the Just. He 
was a Kazarite, abstaining from animal food and strong drink, 
and oils and baths. He wore only linen clothing, and prayed 
so much that his knees grew as hard as a camel's. And thus he 
came to have great influence of the people because of his sanc- 
tity. "When the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus began to 



* Compare the following passages: 
Acts xii. 17; Acts xv. 13, 19; Gal. ii. 
9 ; Acts xxi. 18. In the passage in Gal. 
pre-eminence is assigned him over Peter 



and John, and with them he is called 
a "pillar in the church." On his first 
visit Paul seems to have met that other 
James, "the Lord's brother." — Gal. i. 19. 



230 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

have great power of the people, some of the Scribes and Phari- 
sees placed James in one of the galleries of the Temple, that he 
might teach the people about Jesus, expecting, it would seem, that 
he should teach them what would correct their impression that 
Jesus had risen from the dead. When questioned he answered : 
" Why ask ye me about Jesus the Son of Man ? He sits in heaven, 
on the right hand of great power, and will come on the clouds of 
heaven." This convinced many, who, on the weighty authority of 
James, cried aloud, " Hosannah to the Son of David." This 
made the Scribes and Pharisees so angiy that they threw him 
from the gallery, and stoned him, while he prayed for his perse- 
cutors ; and a fellow took the club with which he was accustomed 
to beat out the clothes, and despatched the Just James by striking 
him a blow on the head. The tradition further states that they 
buried him on the spot where he was killed, and erected a monu- 
ment to him. While there are several points of difficulty in this 
tradition, it comes from so early an age, and is so vivid a picture 
of a good man, and, as to his general character, so confirmatory 
of what we know of him from other sources, that we furnish it 
to our readers, * 

Josephus (Ant., xx. 9) gives a different account of the death of 
James. He says that, in the interval between the recall of Festus 
and the entry of Albinus upon the procuratorship, the younger 
Ananus, the high-priest, called together the Sanhedrim and pro- 
cured the condemnation of James the Just, whom he delivered 
over to be stoned ; that the people complained to Albinus, who 
was angered by the proceeding, and that Agrippa was moved tc 
deprive Ananus of the office of high-priest. Whether this be 
strictly accurate or not, we have in it another confirmation of the 
tradition of the high respect in which James was held by the 
people. 

10. The next in the Apostolic Catalogue is the name of Judas, 
"not Iscariot." Matthew (x. 3) calls him "Lebbeus, whose 
surname is Thaddeus;" Mark (iii. 18), simply 
" Thaddeus ; " Luke (vi. 16) and the writer of the 
Acts of the Apostles (i. 13), "Judas of James." That these 
three names attached to one person I think must be conceded ; 
but that Judas was " the brother " of James is not so clear. 

* See Eusebius ii. 23, and Routh's Rdiqua Sacrce, Ox. ed. p. 208. 



THE TWELVE. 231 

Indeed, it is contrary to the usage of language. " The son of 
James " is probably the proper filling of the ellipsis. But of what 
James we have now no means of knowing. He is not to be con- 
founded with the Judas who wrote the General Epistle, who was 
not of the number of the Apostles. (Jude, ver. 17.) Of the Apos- 
tle Judas we have no record except in John's Gospel (xiv. 22), 
where mere mention is made of his taking part in the last con- 
versation which the disciples had with Jesus, and asking him how 
it was that he would manifest himself to them and not to the 
world, showing the material views his disciples had of Jesus up 
to the last moment of his mission, and how little they sympathized 
with his lofty spiritual ideas. 

11. Simon II. we so call to distinguish him from Simon 
Peter. Matthew * and Mark f call him " Simon the Canaanite ; " 
Luke % speaks of him as " Simon called Zelotes," 

and in the Acts § of the Apostles he is mentioned 
as " Simon Zelotes." All we know of this man we gather from 
the names " Canaanite" and " Zelotes," both words signifying the 
same thing, and given to distinguish him. The writers of the 
New-Testament memorabilia fail to record anything he may ever 
have said or done. The descriptive addendum to his name does 
not imply that he was a descendant of Canaan, nor that he was a 
native or inhabitant of Cana. The Greek word in each case 
would have been different. It comes from the Syro-Chaldee word 
Kanean (or Kanaun) which has its Greek equivalent in " Zelotes," 
and signifies " zealous." Simon most probably had belonged to 
a sect who exhibited great zeal against all who proposed any 
innovation on the Mosaic ritual. At a later period it degenerated 
into a fierce political sect, whose outrages are chronicled by 
Josephus. || Simon probably brought to the work of the Christian 
ministry the warmth of character which had formerly led him to 
attach himself to the Zealots, moderated, it is to be supposed, by 
the better teachings of Jesus. 

12. Judas the Second is, in all the lists of the Apostles, named 
last, and distinguished by the epithet " Iscariot " in Matthew, T 
Mark,*- and Luke,!"]- each of whom also adds a mention of the 



* Matthew x. 4. 
f Mark iii. 18. 
% Luke vi. 16. 
§ Acts i. 13. 



| Wars of the Jews, iv. 3, § 9. 
1 Matt. x. 4. 
** Mark iii. 19. 
ft Luke vi. 16. 



232 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

betrayal. John says that he was the son of Simon, a commoL 
name among the Jews of that day. The name 

Judas II. T . . 

Iscariot is supposed to be a Greek form for the 
Hebrew Jsh-Kerioth, the man of Kerioth, a town in the limits. of 
the tribe of Judah, of which place he is supposed to have been a 
native. Other derivations are suggested, but none seem so pro- 
bable as this. He was the only Apostle who was not a Galilsean. 

The part which Judas came to play in the tragedy which closed 
the life of Jesus has always excited a horror which has been so 
intensified by oratory, poetry, and painting, that it requires some 
effort to examine his case with perfect freedom from all preju- 
dice, which, however, it is necessary to do, not only for strict his- 
torical fidelity, but in order to comprehend' the relations which 
Jesus voluntarily, as well as those which he involuntarily sus- 
tained toward Judas. We have no reason to suppose that his 
childhood and youth were marked with any more prognostications 
of a bad manhood than those of Peter and John. Indeed, he was 
not so much exposed to the danger of contracting vicious habits 
as those youngsters in a small fishing town. His subsequent 
defection flings its shadow back ; but it is to be remembered that 
crimes have been committed in his maturer years by many a 
man who, if he had died young, would have been canonized 
because his youth had been so saintly. The foolish stories of the 
Apocryphal New Testament are mere fantasies. The first inti- 
mation of him in the Gospel histories is that he had Messianic 
hopes, was looking for the deliverance of Israel, with probable 
secular aspirations, but not more worldly than those which ani- 
mated the sons of Jonas and of Zebedee, and thousands of other 
ardent young Hebrews. It is possible that he was among the 
disciples of John, and had been led by his indication to follow 
Jesus as the leader of the great national hopes. 

There is this much certain, that nothing had appeared in his 
conduct to arouse any suspicion in the minds of his brother Apos- 
tles. There was no prejudice against him. On the contrary, he 
Rras a trusted man among them, and was made the treasurer of 
the exchequer which contained their own slender means, and 
whatever was contributed from time to time to be disbursed by 
their charity to the poor. This post of trust and honor he held 
to the very last, and no one seems to have suspected any baseness. 
And Jesus chose to add him to the number of those who should 



THE TWELVE. 



233 



lay the foundation of his kingdom in the hearts of men. And 
yet he betrayed his great and good Friend. 

The selection of Judas as one of his Apostles is, to historians, 
perhaps the most puzzling of all the movements of Jesus, the act 
which is specially pressed by unfriendly critics. But perhaps it 
is not wholly inexplicable even upon critical grounds. Judas Avas 
a powerful man. He had prodigious passions and he had enor- 
mous self-control. When Jesus, as a warning to the other dis- 
ciples, dissected the character of Judas, running the scalpel 
around his heart, this wonderful man had such iron nerve, and 
muscle, and blood, that by neither twitch nor pallor did he allow 
his colleagues to see that Jesus was dissecting Mm. He had great 
financial skill, and men of thought have always had a kind of awe 
for the man who can make money. Merchant princes are greater 
wonders and objects of homage to the scholar than the profound 
and scholarly philosophers are to the wealthy tradesman. The 
disciples admired this in Judas, and probably expected that when 
the " kingdom " should be set up their friend Judas would be 
made " Chancellor of the Exchequer." 

Judas had undoubtedly professed great attachment to Jesus, 
and must have felt upon his rugged nature the sweet influences of 
such a character. He was also among the expectants of the Mes- 
siah. The other disciples kept him in their circle, and as Jesus 
winnowed and winnowed, and the chaff flew away, — such as loved 
father or mother more than Jesus, such as must bury their dead 
before they could follow Jesus, such as must be as secure of a 
bed, at least, as the foxes and the birds, — as those who could not 
endure the tests of the new discipleship dropped back, strange as 
it may seem, it is nevertheless the historical fact, that, for some 
motive, Judas clung to Jesus. The motive may have been very 
base, — we all now agree in believing that at least some baseness 
was in the motive, — but the disciples did not deteet what may 
have been very apparent to their sagacious Master. When he 
came to say which twelve of all the disciples had exhibited the 
greatest devotion to his cause and his person, it was manifest to 
the whole crowd that, after the other eleven had been named, no 
one else stood in the company who had any claims upon Jesus and 
upon his nearest friends which could compete with those of Juda? 
Iscariot. 

Now, if Judas had not been selected, who should have been the 



234 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

twelfth? The disciples trusted him. He had the purse of the 
company. He was as well-behaved as any, probably much more 
polished than the rude Gralilsean fishermen about him. He had 
followed Jesus as closely, he had been as useful as the others. 
Why should he not be chosen ? Some reason would have been 
demanded by the eleven, at least. He could mar, we know : such 
men, it is usually believed, can make. He had probably painted 
the glories of the coming Messianic reign very brilliantly to the 
imagination of his co-disciples. Why should he not continue of 
them ? They had selected him as their treasurer. These twelve 
had been coming into closer communion every day for many 
months. Why should Jesus reject one of the friends ? 

Jesus knew what was in man, what was in Judas. If he re- 
jected Judas, that man of powerful passions might have thwarted 
the designs, disordered the discipleship, and precipitated the des- 
tiny of Jesus. If added to the number of the Apostles, Judas 
could be kept under the eye and under the magnetism of the 
presence of Jesus, so that if he had " a devil," as Jesus declared, 
and if he should betray his Master, as Jesus predicted, that evil 
might be postponed until the " seed of the kingdom " should be 
so planted as no longer to need the personal presence of Jesus, 
but be vigorous and well-grown enough to need only his spiritual 
fostering for its growth to maturity. On this account it were well 
to retain Judas. 

And, then, it is not to be forgotten that no historical personage 
displays so much lovingness as Jesus of Nazareth. His power 
over the world to-day lies not so much in his position in history, 
not in his superior brain, not in any special thing he has done, nor 
in the remarkable thoughts he has uttered, as in the transcendent 
lovingness which intensifies and transfigures and glorifies all his 
deeds and all his words. Devilish as might have been the char- 
acter of Judas, why might it not have been right to afford him all 
the sweet influences which reside in the tender communings of a 
noble brotherhood, whose spiritual father was such a soul as Jesus % 
He could but betray Jesus at the last. Let Jesus do nothing to 
hasten catastrophes. His life is to be too grand, and his influence 
over the ages too powerful to make him afraid lest some critic of 
subsequent times should suggest that in one case at least he com- 
mitted a blunder. It was no blunder ; it was a sublime adven- 
ture of love. 



THE TWELVE. 



235 



1 The Twelve.'' 



As in the case of the other Apostles, we shall trace the history 
and examine the motives of Judas Iscariot more minutely in con- 
nection with that of his Master. For the present we are merely 
taking a view of the general characteristics of those whom Jesua 
first admitted to his intimacy and subsequently appointed his 
lieutenants. 

That this was a special setting apart to a special work seems 
quite apparent from the very face of the history. Up to this date 
these men had mingled with the crowd of disci- 
ples, and bore no signs of separation from their 
brethren, except as they closed up in more solid friendship for 
each other and for Jesus. The language of the historians shows 
that they were now regarded as charged with a mission peculiar 
and responsible. The Avhole body received a name. Never before^ 
but almost always after this election they are called The Twelve, 
ol $a)$€fca, to distinguish them from the other disciples. Never 
before, but by Jesus at their election, and by their brethren after- 
wards, they were called "Apostles." (Luke vi. 13.) It is noticed 
that not before, but after this event the name "Peter" is con- 
stantly applied to Simon the son of Jonas, as his Master had con- 
ferred this name upon him at his selection,* according to a well- 
known Oriental custom. f 

The number of the Apostles deserves some consideration. 
Although many very foolish and fanciful things have been writ- 
ten in regard to the symbolism of numbers, no 

- , ° , ,. , . , - ., Why this number? 

careful student or the ancient records can rail to 
see that some meaning was among all nations, and not the least 
among the Hebrews, assigned to special numbers. Thus 1 sym- 
bolizes unity; 2, antithesis; 3, synthesis and the divinity; 4, hu- 
manity, or the world, as we are reminded of the four corners of 
the earth and the four elements, as anciently supposed, of the four 
seasons and the four points of the compass ; 7, the sum of 3 and 



* See Mark iii. 16 and Luke vi. 14. 
There seems to be an exception in Luke 
v. 8, but there the name ' ' Peter ' ' is 
merely added to that of Simon, and 
this addition is supposed to be a mar- 
ginal note which has crept into the text. 
Again: Matthew introduces the name 
Peter with that of Simon before the 
ordination, but he couples both names 



(as in ch. iv. 18), and after the ordina- 
tion uses only the name Peter. See 
G-reswell, Diss. xxvi. 

f This custom still prevails in the 
East. Chrysostom notices that masters, 
upon purchasing slaves, frequently 
changed their names, as a sign of the 
right acquired over them. 



23G 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



4, the relation of God to the world ; 10, completeness ;* 12, the 
product of 3 and 4, God's indwelling in the world, and we call to 
mind the twelve patriarchs and twelve tribes, and the twelve foun- 
dations and twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. That Jesus 
had the twelve tribes in his mind in fixing the number of the 
Apostles is evident. When Peter asked him what should be the 
reward of those who forsook all and followed him, Jesus said that 
they should " sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel." f Their original mission, we shall see, was to the twelve 
tribes. 

Their mode of appointment must have had in it something 
that solemnly designated them, whether a mere call to step for- 
ward from the crowd, or, in addition thereto, the 

Their order. . . . -, . , , 

imposition ox hands — something that put them 
apart from the promiscuous crowd of disciples. And there 
must have been some order in which they were called. In the 
enumeration above 1 have followed the catalogue as recited by 
Matthew, except that I have put his name before that of Thomas, 
as Mark and Luke do. His modesty seems to have led him to 
make this transposition, thus yielding to Thomas what the other 
historian? do not give, a precedence over himself. His modesty is 
further seen in adding to his own name the reproachful designation 
" a publican," which Mark and Luke considerately omit4 That 
the reader may have before his eye the slight variations in the 
roll of Apostles, he will find in a note the order as given by Mat- 
thew, Mark, and Luke, severally. § The precise order in which 



* Bahr (in his Symbolik, i p. 175) 
Bays : ' ' Ten, by virtue of the general 
laws of thought, shuts up the series of 
primary numbers and includes all in 
itself. The first decade, and of course 
also the number ten, is the representa- 
tive of the whole numeral system; so 
that 10 is the natural symbol of perfec- 
tion and completeness." This view is 
adopted by Dr. Fairbairn (Typol of 
Sciip., vo]. ii. p. 88), who connects it 
with the ten plagues of Egypt, the Ten 
Commandments, and the Tithes. 

f Matt. xix. 28. 

% This is the view taken of this cir- 
cumstance by Eusebius, Demons. Evan- 



§ MATTHEW'S ORDER 


LUKE'S. 


MARK'S. 


1. 


Simon I. (sur- 
named Peter) 


Simon I. 


Simon I. 


2. 


Andrew. 


Andrew. 


James I. 


8. 


James L 


James I. 


John. 


4. 


John. 


John. 


Andrew. 


5. 


Philip. 


Philip. 


Philip. 


6. 


Nathanael Nathanael. Nathanael 




(surnamed 








Bartholo- 








mew). 






7. 


Thomas. 


Matthew. 


Matthew. 


8. 


Matthew. 


Thomas. 


Thomas. 


9. 


James II. 


James II. 


James II, 


0. 


Judas I. 


Simon II. 


Judas I. 




Lebbseus (or 








Thaddseus). 







THE TWELVE. 



237 



Types. 



they were called may not be a matter of vital importance, but as 
the selection shows something of the mind of Jesus, it is interest- 
ing to know whose name fell first from his lips, whose next, and 
next, to the very close of the calling. 

In these men some writers have seen fundamental types oi 
certain qualifications needed for the propagation of Christianity 
Thus, Peter represents Confession ; Andrew, the 
manly pioneer, Missionary Zeal / James I., the 
son of Thunder, Martyrdom ; John,. " the beloved disciple," * 
Mysticism and Depth and' Calmness / Philip, Communion 
(" Come and see ") ; Nathanael, Sincerity, Simplicity, Devout- 
ness / Matthew, Ecclesiastical Learning / Thomas, Inquiry and 
Sacred Criticism ; James II., Union and Ecclesiastical Govern- 
ment ; Judas I. (Lebbseus), Pastoral Faithfulness, Discipline ; 
Simon II., Pastoral Activity ; and Judas II. (Iscariot), Church 
Property. -\ But these seem to be rather fanciful. Gentlemen 
who have been missionary secretaries and treasurers, and heads 
of church publishing houses, would scarcely consent to recog- 
nize Judas Iscariot as their representative in the Apostolic col- 
lege. Calm and unprejudiced historians would say, that while on 
one side of their lives these characteristics were manifested, quite 
as conspicuously on the other side were other things exhibited ; 
and so Peter might just as well represent Falsehood and Coward- 
ice ; James, Bigotry and Ill-Temper; John, Yanity and Ferocity ; 
Thomas, Blind Infidelity ; Matthew, Venality and Baseness ; Si- 
mon II., Intolerance and Ritualism ; Judas Iscariot, Corruption 
and Treachery ; and all the rest of the disciples, Want of Character. 



LUKE'S MARK'S. 

Judas I. Simon II. 
Judas II. Judas II. 



MATTHEW'S ORDER. 

11. Simon II. 

12. Judas II. (Is- 

cariot). 
It will be perceived that they all 
agree as to the relative places of five of 
the Apostles, making- Peter 1st, Philip 
5th, Natbanael 6th, James II. 9th, and 
Judas Iscariot 12th. Matthew and 
Luke make Andrew 2d, James I. 3d, 
and John 4th. Luke and Mark make 
Matthew 7th, and Thomas 8th. Mat- 
thew and Mark make Judas I. as the 
10th, and Simon II. as the 11th. It 
will be seen that Matthew and Luke 
ajpree throughout, except where modesty 



led Matthew into putting himself last in 
the second class, and in the relative po- 
sition of Judas I. and Simon. 

* John twice speaks of himself as the 
disciple "whom Jesus loved " (xiii. 23 ; 
xx. 2), a fact which the other historians 
did not think important enough to men- 
tion. But who could help adverting to 
the most beautiful fact of his own life, 
or make memorable a love so exalted 
and so distinguishing? It may have 
been vanity, but it was a sweet and 
lovely and loving vanity, which is not 
offensive to God, and ought to be par- 
donable to man. 

f See Lange on Matthew x. 



238 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESU&. 

The fact is, that when they were called to be special messen- 
gers and ambassadors from Jesus to the nations, they were not 

The selection not po- such men as ordinary prudence would select. 
htlc " There was not one that would compare with Saul 

of Tarsus, who afterward took the whole moulding of their infant 
society. They were all from the middle ranks. They were not 
learned in the schools, and seemed wholly unfitted to cope with 
the scholarship and measure arms with the philosophy of the 
times. They had no money, nor rich connections, nor political 
associations or influence. They were, as compared with refined 
society, ill-bred, stupid, and incredulous. If the purpose had 
been a political revolution, there was not a man among them whc 
could compare with the Swiss Tell, or perhaps even the Neapolitan 
Masaniello. If they were to overthrow Jewish prejudice and 
silence the Rabbis, there was no one amongst them who could 
talk, except Peter, and he was always so uncertain that no reli- 
ance could be placed upon him. In advance, one could not tell 
whether he would brag, or lie, or run. There were probably only 
two who knew anything of the Greek tongue, namely, Peter and 
Philip. If the nations were to be speedily moved by Christianity, 
it must, as men would reason, be done through the Roman power 
or Greek civilization. But these men were all laymen, and had 
neither political influence nor intellectual culture ; they had no 
standing even among their own people, and certainly no influence 
with their conquerors and civil rulers. Peter and Andrew were 
brothers. So were James I. and John, the friends of Peter and 
Andrew. So were James II. and Judas I. Four of them had been 
disciples of the ascetic John the Baptist. All of them, except 
Judas Iscariot, were of the most uncouth part of the Jewish popula 
tion ; the} 7 were Galilseans, and several of them fishermen. They 
spoke their vernacular brokenly. It is as if a man should select 
a dozen negroes, of average character, from the plantations of the 
Southern States of America, and set them on the work of revolu 
tionizing the philosophy of all schools, and the elements of ali 
civilization, and the systems of all religion. 

It is to be noticed that they did not choose him : he chose 
them. This he tells them. (John xv. 16.) This is true of their 

They diii not choose public work. They had gathered about him and 
him - clung together through personal love of him, but 

they had not settled it in their minds precisely what he was, and 



THE TWELVE. 



239 



their regard for him was largely mingled with an expectation of 
future secular good and glory, if their general expectation should 
prove correct. " "Wliat shall we have, therefore ? " was the ques- 
tion of Peter, who, with all his faults, was certainly not the most 
selfish among the disciples. (Matt. xix. 27.) 

It is to be specially noticed that there is nothing of the modern 
Church idea in anything done by Jesus on this or any other occa- 
sion* These men were not inducted into any Nothing of the 
priestly office, or given any pre-eminence over "Church "idea, 
their brethren. They were distinguished, discriminated, set apart 
for a special work, but not clothed with corporate powers. There 
was no baptism or any other rite indicative of an entrance upon 
church membership. Jesus did not baptize. His disciples had 
done so, but they had taken the idea from John the Baptist, who 
baptized those who were already in the church, and whose bap. 
tism was to indicate the Messiah. If an outward formal sign did 
no good, it did no hurt, and Jesus had allowed it. But he had 
established no sacrament. These men had no creed. There was 
no creed. They loved Jesus. They hoped great things from 
Jesus. He loved them, and intended to instruct them, and leave 
with them " the gospel of the kingdom." What he seems to have 
seen in them, and what was the basis of their call, was the reli- 
giousness of their general character. Whatever culture they 
lacked, and whatever faults they had, they had devoutness, devo- 
tedness, the capability of giving themselves finally and fully up to 
an idea : they had some certain noticeable genius for religion. 
Them he selected to instruct ; but he gave them no esoteric cul- 
ture ; told them nothing about himself which he did not tell the 
multitude ; imparted nothing which should in any manner give 
them any title to rule others who believed on him. Luke (vi. 13) 
says that he " named them Apostles," and Mark (iii. 14, 15) says 
that " he ordained twelve, that they should he with him, and that he 
might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sick- 
ness and to cast out devils." To be wholly given to the work of 
teaching the truth, and doing good to the bodies and souls of men, 
was the work of these men sent of Jesus, and therefore called 



* The word translated " church " 
occurs only twice in the histories of 
Jesus, namely, in Matt. xvi. 18, and 
Matt, xviii. 17, in neither of which, it 



seems to me, can impartial criticism 
find anything like the modern " close 
corporation " idea. They will be exam* 
ined in their places. 



240 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

Apostles. Some organization naturally took place, after the 
death of Jesus, keeping together those who loved him. But that 
they were to be considered a close corporation, keeping all of 
Christianity, all the beautiful and precious legacy of Jesus, tc 
themselves, with powers to transmit to future generations of suc- 
cessors by mesne descent, never seems to have entered the mind 
of Jesus, or any of The Twelve. 




ANCIENT LAMP-STAN©. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



Having set apart his chosen ambassadors, it remained that 
Jesus should set forth the principles of his religion, give some 
snch evidence of his divine right to teach as Near Capernaum, 
should be able to move the generation around Matt - v -» **•' viL 
him, and impart his spirit to those who were to infuse it into the 
world. He proceeded at once to this work. The first movement 
was the delivery of a discourse, which has been known generally 
as the " Sermon on the Mount" reports of which are furnished 
us by Matthew and Luke. 

It would require a much larger volume than this to give the lit- 
erature which has grown around the questions of the time and place 
of delivery of this " sermon," and whether Matthew and Luke 
report the same or different discourses. And the literature of the 
sermon itself would make a library quite respectable in point of 
size. It is clear that much must be condensed. 

The place was a mountain. It could not have been very far 
from the lake. The earliest tradition of the spot is as late as the 
middle of the thirteenth century. That makes it 

_^ Place of delivery 

what is now called the " Horns of Hattin," be- 
tween Tiberias and Mt. Tabor, seven miles from Capernaum, in a 
south-westerly direction. Dr. Robinson (Researches, ii. p. 307) 
gives the following description of this spot : " The road passes 
down to Hattin on the west of the Tell ; as we approached, we 
turned off: from the path toward the right, in order to ascend the 
Eastern Horn. As seen on this side, the Tell, or mountain, is 
merely a low ridge, some thirty or forty feet in height, and not ten 
minutes in length from east to west. At its eastern end is an 
elevated point or horn, perhaps sixty feet above the plain ; and 
at the western end another, not so high ; these give to the ridge, at 
a distance, the appearance of a saddle, and are called Kurun 
Hattin, * Horns of Hattin.' But the singularity of the ridge is, 
16 



242 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDTE OF JESUS. 

that, on reaching the top, yon find that it lies along the very bor- 
der of the great southern plain, where this latter sinks off at once, 
by a precipitous offset, to the lower plain of Hattin, from which 
the northern side of Tell rises very steeply not much less than four 
hundred feet. . . . The summit of the Eastern Horn is a 
little circular plain, and the top of the lower ridge between the 
two horns is also flattened to a plain. The whole mountain is of 
limestone." Dr. Stanley (Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 360) 
gives the following : " The tradition [of the Latin Church, which 
selects this spot as the ' Mount of Beatitudes '] cannot lay cairn 
to any early date ; it- was in all probability suggested first to the 
Crusaders by its remarkable situation. But that situation so 
strikingly coincides with the intimations of Gospel narrative, as 
almost to force the inference that in this instance the eye of those 
who selected the spot was for once rightly guided. It is the only 
height seen in this direction from the shores of the Lake Genne- 
saret. The plain on which it stands is easily accessible from the 
lake, and from that plain to the summit is but a few minutes' walk. 
The platform at the top is evidently suitable for the collection of 
a multitude, and corresponds precisely to the ' level place ' ^tottov 
irehivov), (mistranslated 'plain' in Luke vi. 17) to which he 
' would come down ' as from one of its higher horns to address 
the people. Its situation is central both to the peasants of the 
Galilsean hills and the fishermen of the Galilsean lake, between 
which it stands, and would, therefore, be a natural resort both to 
' Jesus and his disciples ' (Matt. iv. 25, and v. 1), when they retired 
for solitude from the shores of the sea, and also to the crowds 
who assembled ' from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, 
from Judsea, and from beyond Jordan.' None of the other 
mountains in the neighborhood could answer equally well to this 
description, inasmuch as they are merged into the uniform barrier 
of hills round the lake ; whereas this stands separate, — ' the moun- 
tain,' which alone could lay claim to a distinct name, with the ex- 
ception of the one height of Tabor, which is too, distant to an- 
swer the requirements." 

The question as to whether the discourse beginning in the fifth 

chapter of Matthew and that in the sixth of Luke be different or 

Keports by Matthew identical is quite perplexing, as there seem to be 

and Luke. grave objections to both suppositions. That they 

are identical is believed by most readers upon a superficial in 



THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 243 

spection, and is maintained generally by most German commen- 
tators. And then efforts must be made to explain the differences 
winch occur in the two. In Luke we have only about one-third 
the matter given by Matthew, four of the beatitudes being " bal- 
anced by four woes," as Dean Alford notices ; and some intro 
ductory sayings are recorded which do not appear in Matthew. 
That they are two different discourses is held by a number of 
writers, and among them Greswell {Dissert, xxvi.). Against 
this it is urged as improbable that he should have delivered two 
distinct discourses so nearly alike, and both so near the begin- 
ning of his public ministry. The beginnings and the conclu- 
sions in both discourses agree. They seem to be the same, and 
different. Matthew tells us that the sermon was delivered on a 
mount ; Luke, that it was on a plain. If both histories be read 
carefully and without prejudice, I think the following will occur 
to the reader as the probable state of the case : 

What we find reported by both Matthew and Luke must have 
been delivered during the same journey through Galilee, and at 
the close of that journey. What Luke reports, if it be not the 
same, must have been delivered immediately after the discourse 
Matthew gives ; but his report is so connected as to compel the 
abandonment of the theory that it is a number of the apoph- 
thegms, delivered at different times, recollected by Matthew and 
strung together. The people had gathered in great crowds about 
Jesus. He went up into the mountain. His disciples came to 
him. Others must have accompanied his disciples. He deliv- 
ered the discourse which is begun in Matt. v. 3. When that was 
completed he commenced to descend the mountain. On the 
plateau below he found greater multitudes. He repeated some 
things he had just spoken, and added others, making together the 
speech which begins in Luke vi. 20. It is not right to speak of 
the former as esoteric and the latter as exoteric. There was 
nothing of that style in Jesus. All is outspoken truth — such 
truth as individual men in every stage of culture need. But it is 
to be admitted, to his more select and friendly audience he should 
have spoken more freely of the Scribes and Pharisees than to a 
promiscuous assemblage. 

This statement of the case is, at least, a natural one, as all whc 
have preached to crowds in rural districts must know, and consists 
with all the major and minor incidents related by both historians. 



244: SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

It agrees, too, with the physical conditions of the Mount of 
Beatitudes, if that selected by tradition be the mount, as the de- 
scriptions given above exhibit, especially the passage from Dr. 
Robinson which is italicized. It agrees with such incidents as 
this : Matthew says that he sat, Luke that he stood ; and the former 
he naturally would do on rising ground, the latter on a plain. 
Matthew represents his audience as coming to him after he had 
taken his seat, Luke as being about him when he began ; and this 
is just what would have taken place if the case be as is supposed 
above. It is to be noticed, also, that the case of the centurion in 
Capernaum follows close upon Matthew's account, and immedi- 
ately upon Luke's, thus drawing these two discourses together in 
the history. 

CIRCUMSTANCES. 

Before entering upon a consideration of the teachings of this 
extraordinary sermon, let us endeavor to place ourselves amid the 
circumstances of its delivery. 

The spot was one of the most beautiful in all Palestine. While 
on other occasions Jesus " preferred the unostentatious and obscure, 
he seems to have selected the most enchanting spot in nature as 
the temple in which to open his ministry. Travellers are wont 
to liken the mountain scenery of Galilee to the finest in their na- 
tive lands, — the Swede, Hasselquist, to East Gothland, and Clarke, 
the Englishman, to the»romantic dales of Kent and Surrey. The 
environs of the Galilsean Sea have been compared with the border 
of the lake of Geneva." * The blooming landscape lay before 
the speaker, the neighboring hills enriched with vineyards, while 
to the west stood wooded Carmel, and snowy Hermon to the north, 
and down before him, seeming almost at his feet, the bright Lake 
of Galilee, glittering and rippling in its frame of forest. The vault 
of that cathedral was the oriental sky, seen through an atmosphere 
so transparent that one who had spent a quarter of a century in 
the Holy Land says of it : " One seems to look quite to the bot- 
tom of heaven's profoundest azure, where the everlasting stars 
abide;" and, standing in Beirut, he says, "How sharply defined 
is every rock and ravine, and tree and house, on lofty Lebanon ! 
That virgin snow on its summit is thirty miles off, and yet you 

* Tholuck, Edinb. Bib. Cab., No. vi. p. 73. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 245 

could almost read your own name there, if written with a bold 
hand on its calm cold brow." * 

It was in the spring or early summer, when Nature was in hei 
most luscious richness. It was in the early morning, when the fresh 
est sweetness of the day's smile fell on land and sea. 
The birds had not fallen from the height of their 
morning songs to the drowse of the heated hours. The crowds were 
collecting from every part, drawn by curiosity, wonder, love, or 
by the strange power with which all crowds of people have to swell 
themselves. The Messianic expectations had become more vehe- 
mently excited, and it was supposed that Jesus would soon declare 
himself, and let the people know what he intended to do, and what 
to teach. As it was the first, so it was the grandest specimen of 
field-preaching. The journeyings of Jesus, and his works and 
words, had drawn great multitudes from the thickly settled Galilee, 
from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, and the neighboring districts of 
Judaea ; from the east of the Jordan, and from as far west as the 
coasts of Tyre or Sidon. (Mat. iv. 25, and Luke vi. 17.) It was 
an occasion of transcendent religious interest and importance. 
The congregation was great, the expectation was great, the Teacher 
was great. No discourse ever delivered is so worthy of study 
and analysis as this. It is worth the while to endeavor to dis- 
cover what there is in it which has produced such an impression 
upon men and done so much for the moral elevation of the world. 

THE TEXT. 

If it may be permitted to suggest the text of this sermon as it 
lay in the mind of the great and influential Speaker, I should say 
that it is 

" Character" 

With the suddenness of lightning and with the sharpness of a 
surgeon's scalpel he penetrates to the core of all life in the very first 
sentence. He has no exordium, no pompously announced plan, 
no rhetorical rests and starts and other tricks. Without prefa- 
tory, introductory, or apologetic remarks, he plunges right into 
his subject. His first announcements tear away all the shams of 
Pharisaism, all the millinery of churchism, and all the pretensions 
of perfunctory and transmitted religion. To him succession is 

* Thomson, Land and Book, vol. i. p. 17. 



246 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

nothing; nothing to be of Abraham's seed or Aaron's lineage, 
Each man stands out before him, the subject of his study, the 
object of his description ; and each man stands in the loneness of 
his individual responsibility, with no claim upon attention but his 
character, and no fountain of happiness but his character. Cir- 
cumstances count for nothing. Riches, rank, and honors do not 
make the supreme distinction among men. Being in the church 
or outside does not discriminate men as touching their chief dif- 
ference. By waters of baptism, by imposition of hands, by priestly 
garments, by bishop's mitre, by high-priest's breastplate, a man 
does not attain to the position for which he was designed and for 
which he longs. Nor do even outward acts, however consonant 
with prevailing ideas of morality, however conservative of the 
commonwealth, however consistent with all the best men's views 
of what should be a good man's life. All these things may be- 
long to a man, and yet he may not be what he should be — Happy. 
The great distinction among men lies in this : the being happy 
and blessed, or otherwise. Not in being free from care, bereave- 
ment, the saddening facts of human history which fall into every 
man's life at some time, but in having such a character that the 
outward shall neither weaken nor contaminate the inner, so that the 
man shall not depend upon fountains outside, but be secure in the 
possession of springs inside. A man is like a walled city. If the 
supply of its water be from lakes or rivers outside, that are brought 
down by aqueducts into reservoirs, from which, by leading-pipes, it 
is distributed through the city, then when the enemy destroys the 
aqueducts the city must capitulate or the inhabitants perish. So 
with a man's soul. If he is compelled to bring in joys his condi- 
tion is most precarious, and he is not happy ; it is most undignified, 
and he is not blessed. But if he sends out joys his condition is in 
his own hands, and he is happy; he is imparting to others and 
he is blessed. It must be recollected that the company whom 
Jesus was addressing was surrounded on the ecclesiastical side, by 
churchism, by teachers who insisted upon everything consisting 
in being Abraham's children ; and on the secular side by the 
oppression of an empire that had no sympathy with their religion, 
and no care for their temporal prosperity, beyond the point at 
which they could be plundered to enrich their heathen conquerors. 
They were longing for a Messiah, a messenger from Jehovah, who 
should be their Deliverer. But he would not hasten his coming, and 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 24:7 

their souls were faint with expectation. Naturally these people 
needed rest and happiness. This great Teacher taught them the 
lessons men need in all ages, a religion which makes the man the 
master of circumstances by breaking the tyranny of his surround- 
ings and setting up an inward kingdom, making the Inner the 
ruler of the Outward. 

It was a reversal of all their Rabbis had taught them, and all 
their conquerors had impressed upon them. The former had 
given them a religion which consisted wholly in forms and cere- 
monies and rituals ; the latter had flaunted their riches and paraded 
their power in the presence of those who had been the world's aris- 
tocracy, but who were then impoverished, degraded, and disheart- 
ened. David's glory and Solomon's splendor had paled before 
the magnificence of a heathen imperialism. Yery far away 
seemed all the grand history of the march of their ancestors 
through the desert, when Jehovah cared for their commissariat 
and went before them in the solemn pillar of fire and cloud. In 
ghostly thinness walked before their fancies the forms of their 
Judges, who in olden time were men of such might of brain and 
brawn. The Urim and Thummim were oracular no longer, and 
the voices of their prophets were as the songs of childhood's hope- 
fulness repeated to the ears of paralyzed and depressed and 
despairing old age. 

And they were looking for a temporal Deliverer, one who should 
break the Roman yoke. If that could be done, if Caesar's power 
could be thrown off, if a king should sit on David's throne with 
whom. Csesar would be compelled to treat as with a superior, if 
all nations should acknowledge the Hebrew supremacy, then the 
land should flow with milk and honey, and all the trees of the 
field should clap their hands, and under every vine and every fig- 
tree should be seated a contented and happy Jew, and the days 
of the right hand of the Most High should visit and rejoice his 
chosen. Alas ! poor people, they could not rid themselves of the 
common hallucination that a man is made happy by his surround- 
ings. They could not see that the Roman, who had might and 
glory, was not a happy man. 

Jesus saw this great increasing multitude of people hungry for 
something. He knew the sad mistake of their souls. He had 
shown himself in all his life a person of exquisite and profound 
sympathy. On this occasion he seemed full of an interest which 



248 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

was growing in him, and when the time came and they were look 
ing that he should declare himself, that he should define his posi- 
tion, that he should give some intimation of his designs, and per- 
haps of his plans, that he should at once openly unfurl the ban 
ner of the Messianic campaign, and make a distinct demonstra* 
tion against the Koman Empire, then " he opened his mouth and 
taught them." That was all. But it was teaching that had truth 
and authority of manner to make it impressive, and has been mak- 
ing greatness and goodness for man from that day to this. 



THE BEATITUDES. 

Elements of Lofty Character, 

His first utterance sounds like the closing rather than the open- 
ing of a discourse. It sounds as if much had gone before — very 
many questions and no little discussion — and now 
spirit, for theirs is the the conclusion of the whole matter was to be 
kingdom of the heav- stated. He struck far away from all they were 
looking at in the very first words he spoke. He 
gazed upon them and cried out, " Happy the poor in spirit, for 
theirs is the kingdom of the heavens ! " And this decision of 
his intellect, coming as an outburst of his heart, he follows up by a 
series of descriptive characteristics which mark the man who is 
the happy or blessed man. And these we must carefully exam- 
ine that we may find the philosophy of this Teacher, and learn if 
possible the method of this discourse. It will be seen that they 
all describe character ', and that there is no place for rank or wealth 
or any of the outward distinctions of human life. 

" The poor in spirit " is the first characteristic. As this is a 
kind of key-note, it is not to be wondered that there has been much 
diversity of opinion as to the meaning of Jesus. When we come 
to see how spiritual is the whole tone of this discourse, we are 
forced to feel that mere poverty, lack of material wealth, which is 
the most literal bare sense of the word " poor," cannot have been 
meant. It has been suggested * that the words are to be collocated 
so as to read, " Happy in spirit are the poor." But there is no 
authority for this arrangement of the words, and the oldest MS.*) 1 

* By such writers as Olearius, Wet- | f The Sinaitio Codex. 
stein, Michaelis, and Paulus. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 249 

extant gives the order Mcucapioi 01 irTwyoi tw Trvevfiari,, and if the 
arrangement were as suggested above, it would break the symme- 
try of the beatitudes, and, finally, it would be notoriously false. 
The people that listened to Jesus were poor enough and unhappy 
enough. It would have been to them neither instruction nor com- 
fort to tell them in rhetorical flourish that the poor are happy. 
When the Emperor Julian, in the fourth century, said that his 
only object in confiscating the property of Christians was that 
their poverty might confer on them a title to the kingdom of 
heaven, instead of a bitter scoff it would have been a benevolent 
thing in the Apostate, if Jesus meant mere literal poverty. And 
then it should follow that if one would benefit one's fellow, the 
very best method is to take his property, burn his houses, strip 
him, and turn him naked and empty on the world. There can 
be no interpretation put upon the words of a man of common 
sense which shocks common sense. Moreover, Jesus was a man 
who was extraordinarily spiritual, and as far as possible from being 
gross in his modes of thought. He was surpassingly sagacious, 
and as far as possible from being stupid, and therefore could have 
had no meaning contradicted by the whole history of the race. 

The phrase has been translated to signify voluntary poverty, 
poverty from a spirit of being poor, " qui propter Spiritum Sanc- 
tum voluntate sunt pauperes," as Jerome says. But that agrees 
neither with the genius of the language nor with the analogy of 
the discourse. Precisely the same grammatical construction re- 
curs in verse 8, and the reader will see how violent a similar ren- 
dering would be in that passage. 

There are two interpretations which may be accepted as being 
more natural under the circumstances, and more in accordance 
with the whole drift of the discourse. One is by Clement of 
Alexandria, who thinks that when Jesus pronounced the poor 
blessed, he meant all those who, whether as to worldly goods rich 
or poor, do inwardly sit loose from their property, and conse- 
quently in that way are poor, — a view similar to that of Paul in 
i. Cor. vii. 29 : " they that have as though they have not." That 
may be a truth included in what Jesus taught on this occasion, 
but is that the teaching ? Let us see if we cannot find a still more 
natural interpretation. 

Let us recollect the state of mind of those whom he was ad- 
dressing. What specially made them unhappy was their sense oi 



250 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

their worldly poverty as individuals and as a nation. In any age 
of the world, to any people, that is most galling. The embarrass- 
ments and degradation of such a condition go far towards break- 
ing the spirit of a man. In striving to reach the meaning of 
Jesus, all a critical historian can do, and perhaps all that any 
one ought to do, is first to know, if practicable, what were the 
precise words employed, and then to ascertain how those identi- 
cal words would be understood generally by the average minds of 
those who composed the very audiences he addressed. If the 
speaker be not a fool or a charlatan he will strive to find for his 
ideas just those words which when uttered to the ears of another 
will put in the mind of the hearer the idea that is in the mind of 
the speaker. Jesus had lived with the people he addressed. Their 
vernacular was his mother-tongue. He knew their hopes and 
fears, their opinions and prejudices, their modes of thought and 
methods of speech. He was of the people. He was not a dema- 
gogue, in the sense of one who vilely leads the people astray by 
playing upon their weaknesses for his own advantage. He was a 
Demagogus in the lofty sense of one who exerts his superior abil- 
ity to lead the thoughtless and passionate multitude into sound 
thinking and right acting. He will speak words that shall be 
comprehensible by them in their first intent and present mean- 
ing, even if he include therein a profound meaning which shall 
develop itself with the developing ages. When, therefore, we 
come, as now we must come, to consider the meaning of Jesus', we 
must endeavor to ascertain what his words would mean to the 
average mind in all that Galilsean and Judsean and Idumsean 
crowd that stood about him ; men and women who were living 
before the early Christian fathers, and the decisions of councils, 
and opinions of those commentators who run the golden words of 
the Teacher into the moulds of their own theories ; men and wo- 
men who lived ages before Augustine, and Arminius, and Luther, 
and Calvin, and Wesley, and Paulas, and Tholuck, and Strauss. 

To such a crowd these words most probably meant that they 
were unhappy who suffered themselves to be afflicted by a sense 
of their want of material prosperity, but they were happy who 
felt the want in their spirits, their spiritual neediness and poverty ; 
who would be unhappy if sitting on Csesar's throne with empty 
souls, but happy amid starvation if spiritually rich. In general 
it was a statement of the superiority of the spiritual to the corpo- 



TEE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



251 



real. His hearers were in wretched restlessness because the Mes- 
siah did not hasten to come and break the Roman yoke. They 
felt their poverty as to the flesh, but not their poverty as to the 
spirit j and they were unhappy. The first words of Jesus in this 
discourse were such as shocked their hopes of secular deliverance. 
It is as if he had said : My countrymen, you desire me to lead a 
revolt against the Roman Empire. You have confidence in my 
ability to achieve success. Your feeling of poverty intensifies your 
desire for the enterprise. You think that then the kingdoms of 
this world would be open to you. But I come to show you 
another way, a way that leads out to a larger and wealthier place. 
Happy are they who feel their spiritual necessities, for the king- 
dom of the universe* is open to them. 

Now this is a proposition, a consciousness of the truth of which 
may be achieved in any man's experience, in some measure, in 
any age of the world. The man who feels physical want will 
find his sources of happiness in the physical world; the man who 
feels his intellectual wants will find his sources of happiness in 
the intellectual world; while the man who feels his spiritual wants 
finds his sources of happiness in all the dominion of all the heavens, 
that is, in the whole universe ; and he is a happy man. He reigns 
where Caesar's sceptre cannot reach ; and when all the Caesars 
shall have passed away, and the present scheme of things be dis- 
solved, he has the heavens still, the constant enduring universe. 
Alas ! how little a portion of the wants of the human heart can 
the empires of Alexander, of the Caesars, of Charlemagne, and of 
Napoleon fill ! But " the heavens," — which phrase means the 
sphere of the soul as distinguished from " the earth," which is the 
sphere of the body, — the heavens come in to fill the spirit that is 
empty, if a man but feel the horror of that emptiness and seek 
the kingdom of the heavens. 

And then he expands this idea by pronouncing those happy 
who mourn, and those who are meek. The-e are paradoxes 
levelled at the secular and worldly longings of the H thev who 
people. These men who listened to him had mourn, for they shaii 
seen the heathen in great power and apparent 
happiness. They had seen the magnificent towns and villas which 



* Luke, in vi. 20, calls it " the king- 
dom of God." The most natural trans- 
lation of the phrase in Matthew is 



' ' the kingdom of the universe ; " but 
both mean finally the same thing, aa 
God reigns throughout the universe. 



252 SECOND AND THIRD PASS0VEK IN THE LTFE OF JESTJ8. 

had been erected along the shores of their lake by their political 
lords, and had witnessed all the pleasures which they seemed to 
enjoy in their mansions, with goodly furniture and manifold ap- 
pliances of luxury. Those happy Romans did not mourn. They 
had not seen trailing in the dust the standards which their an- 
cestors had made glorious. They did not feel royal blood tingling 
in them as they bowed their necks to a foreign yoke. To the 
conquered Jew they were at once objects of hate and of envy. 
And now to those Jews Jesus says that they who mourn are hap- 
py ! But we must read his words in the light afforded by the 
text as well as with the aids furnished by the circumstances. He 
is teaching that everything depends upon character, the inner 
man. He is drawing them away from externals as a basis of 
happiness. The man who bewails not his temporal and physical 
wants, but his spiritual needs, is not a man to be so much compas- 
sionated. He shall be comforted. He who whines and wails over 
his worldly condition ma}' go on whining and wailing. He has 
no assurance that he shall have his condition improved. But the 
man, rich or poor, king or peasant, who feels that to be poverty- 
stricken in his soul is the greatest misfortune, and one by all 
means to be remedied, — who, when he detects himself lacking 
truth, courage, self-control, mourns over that more than over 
the absence of meats and wines and couches, and whatever 
money buys, — such a man is a blessed man ; for he shall be com- 
forted. 

The Jews had lost Judaea. A conquered people who remain in 
the land are greater sufferers than those who are banished or go 
nappy the meek, for voluntarily into exile. The Jews remained on 
they shaii inherit the sufferance. They were put under the yoke, sub- 
jugated, saw others rule what once had belonged 
to them, and had been under their control in fee. Having been 
masters, they were now slaves. They were far from being " meek." 
They were very far from submitting to the inevitable, but " kicked 
against the pricks," and rubbed against the yoke, and aggravated 
their sufferings by their hatred of the conqueror, and by foolish, 
vain, unfounded hopes. Once more Jesus turned them from the 
outside to the inner man, and pointed to the happiness of those 
who were gentle in spirit, who soothed themselves and those about 
them by the quiet self-possession of their own souls. Again he 
disappointed their political hopes by giving a spiritual interpreta- 






THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



253 



tion to a phrase with which they were familiar.* Their land was 
holy land, because promised land, given by Jehovah to Abraham 
and his seed to possess it. It was to them the type and the per- 
petual prophecy of that better land beyond death. There never 
has existed a people who had a more desperate and fanatical at- 
tachment to the soil upon which they were born than the Jews. 
Their patriotism was their religion, and their religion their pa- 
triotism. The land of Abraham was heaven on earth. To be in 
Abraham's bosom was to consummate the hopes of earth by what- 
ever bliss might be in heaven. 

The Romans held the land of Abraham. The Jews, who were 
plotting revolts and stirring up insurrections, were losing every- 
thing. They were missing all domestic enjoyment ; they were 
failing to improve their lands and their houses, and to promote 
the growth of true religion among their children ; so that while 
they " dwelt in the land " it was as prisoners. All they loved 
was going to decay before their eyes. They were afflicted with a 
mania which has not died out from among men, but every now 
and then in modern times breaks forth, a feverish feeling that 
everything depends upon the political condition of a people. 
Proud, violent men inflame the people with this idea. Proud, 
violent men believe that happiness is in high position and fame, 
in being in a condition to lord it over their fellows. It is all a 
mistake. A man who has a quiet good soul can be just as good 
and great, can live as happily and die as nobly in Pussia as in 
France, in France as in England, in England as in America. 
Emperor, king, president, it makes so little difference that it is 
not worth one human life to change it. An ambitious, selfish, 
ill-tempered, weak man will be unhappy anywhere. A meek 
man is not a weak man, but one who has the strength to hold 
himself in, as one by a strong bridle holds a strong and fiery 
horse. He will be happy anywhere. He will inherit the earth. 
He will be in the enjoyable possession of the earth, for that is the 
meaning of the words. This is a general truth. Conquerors overr 
run a land, but they do not enjoy it. The king is often overbur- 



* Compare Deut. xix. 14 ; Psalm xxv. 
13 ; xxxvii. 9, for variations of this 
phrase. " The land " is spoken of re- 
peatedly through Deuteronomy as be- 
longing to the Jewish people. All are 



familiar with the words in the Fifth 
Commandment. Jesus in this passage 
uses the precise phrase which occurs in 
Ps. xxxv ii. 11. 



254 SECOND AND THD3D PASSOVER IN THE UFE OF JESUS. 

dened with the load of stateship, and rides in magnificent -weari 
ness over immense domains from which he can draw no increase 
of delight; while down those valleys and on those hill-slopes, 
in a thousand cottages, are multitudes of men and women and 
little children who really " inherit," by enjoying all the earth 
can yield of physical delight, and in those cloisters are many 
students who " inherit " by enjoying all the intellectual delights 
which a study of the earth can give. 

If these people whom Jesus addressed were expecting that in 
the reign of the Messiah they should have material riches, worldly 
pleasures, and the indulgence of the pride of power, and if they 
supposed Jesus to be the Messiah, they were to be disappointed. 
He was no revolutionist. He was no political preacher. He had 
a deeper, loftier mission. He had not come to "fire the Jewish 
heart," but to purify the spiritual life of the world. So through- 
out this discourse he describes all excellence as consisting in 
character, and all real happiness as having its fountains in the 
soul. There is not a single beatitude which has its basis in exter- 
nal things. Jesus thus plainly instructs them in the beginning 
that they are not to regard him as being about to add himself to 
the number of those conquerors who divide the acquired territory 
among their followers. They may have been expecting that he 
should subdue the world and give it to the Jewish people. He 
had no such intent. Those that looked for such things need not 
be followers of Jesus. There was no happiness in all this worldly, 
exorbitant, insatiable heat. The kingdom he should set up would 
be in the hearts of men. 

And so, whenever occasion served, Jesus restored to their spiri- 
tual meaning phrases and passages of the Holy Scriptures which 

the Jews had lowered to a most secular significa- 
ger and thirst after tion. And then he intensified and still more 
^1?^' f ° r they m 'g nl y spiritualized those passages. Almost every 

phrase he uses must have recalled some well- 
known expression in the Prophets, the Psalms, or the Law. 
Thus he describes the happy man as one who " hungers and 
thirsts after righteousness." In the East thirst implied the most 
intense desire, and was the most vivid representation of longing 
to a people who dwelt in lands where there was a scarcity of 
water. This unspeakable desire to be upright, right towards God 
xnd man, right inwardly, whether the life should be able to be 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 255 

brought to the high standard or not, this marks a true man. 
Hunger seeks to eat, and thirst to drink. It must be an inward 
satisfaction. The man may be up to his lips in water and in food, 
and all things outward fail to satisfy him. The words of Jesue 
must have reminded his hearers of David's simile of the hart 
panting after the water-brooks (Ps. xlii. 1), and the outcry of in- 
vitation in Isaiah (lv. 1) : " Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye 
to the waters." Perhaps it recalled also that remarkable passage 
in the Psalms, " I shall appear in righteousness before thy face 
I shall be satisfied when thy glory appears." * It is to be observed 
that the promise made is of the inward and not of the outward, 
Longings for righteousness are to be satisfied by righteousness. 
The reward of loving is the increased power to love. The reward 
of longing to be righteous is the increased power of being right- 
eous. All such people shall be filled. 

Having given these blows to secular hopes by stating three of 
the characteristics of those who are really happy and blessed, such 
as he should desire to have for his subjects if he is to be king of 
men in any sense, he immediately states three other characteristics ; 
and it is to be noticed that the first three are such as a man will 
be conscious of in his own soul while they may be wholly unknown 
to others, while at least two of the next three open into the visible 
life. 

The hidden growth of grace now begins to bring forth fruit. 
The man who has felt and mourned his poverty of spirit, who has 
become self -continent and meek, whose heart has Happy the mercifu] ^ 
been athirst for righteousness, is not selfish, but for they shaii obtain 
goes out in love and pity to his fellow-men. The mercy ' 
subjects of a spiritual kingdom, which is to consist in the para- 
mount influence of love, are to be merciful. Conquering warriors 
were not ordinarily merciful, but had what the heathen thought to 
be the sweets of hating. The conquered were not merciful, but 
had the sweets of revenge. And neither were happy. The happy 
man is he who seeks to make others happy, whether they be good 
and grateful or bad and thankless. 

The next characteristic of the happy is that they are pure in 
heart, heartily pure, loving purity, and seeking to have it inwardly. 



* This translation I give from the I Ps. xvi 15. In our common English 
Septuagint version, where it occurs in I version it is xvii. 15. 



256 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

The logical connection between this " beatitude " and that which 
Happy the pure in immediately precedes and follows is not quite so 
Heart, for they shau see apparent. Indeed it is to be doubted whether in 
the mind of Jesus there was anything of that 
strict scholastic arrangement of ideas which so many commentators 
endeavor to construct for this discourse. Nevertheless there must 
have been in the mind of this great teacher some thread of dis- 
course, some nexus of thought or feeling which prompted the 
succession of ideas. Perhaps it is found in the meaning assigned 
by Jesus, which may not have been the modern sense of purity. 
Perhaps he did not mean those who are free from violation of 
the seventh commandment, but rather those who from the heart 
observe the ninth ; not so much those who are not carnal as those 
who are not cunning. Happy the sharp, cunning man, is the 
general verdict. Such men are supposed to be able to secure the 
riches, the honors, the glories of the world. They are the grand 
speculators, the successful diplomatists. But Jesus declares that 
the innocent, the innocuous, those whose souls are honest, whose 
intents are guileless, whose spirits are surrounded by a mora] 
atmosphere of perfect transparency, — that these are the blessed, 
happy men. 

And he assigns this remarkable reason for such blessedness — 
" they shall see God." Now, as all the happiness must in some 
sort correspond with the condition of character stated, we can 
be assisted by an understanding of one to the comprehension 
of the other. What is this vision of God, and when shall it take 
place 1 Some have held that visio beatifica was real bodily sight, 
others that it was purely mental, others that it was both physical 
and spiritual ; some that it is now, others that it will be in the 
state of existence which the soul shall maintain beyond the 
grave, others that it is both here and hereafter. 

That Jesus simply used these words in a spiritual sense I have 
no doubt, nor do I doubt that they signify a blessedness which 
is not confined to either life, but is as true of the here as of the here- 
after. It is familiar to the students of the Bible that these writ- 
ers use "see" and "know" almost interchangeably. The Great 
Teacher probably intended to convey the idea that in order to 
know God, to understand His nature and His ways, simple-heart- 
edness, clearness of the atmosphere about the mind and heart, is 
necessary ; that the sharpness which wins in the games of life, 



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THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 257 

and the sagacity which obtains among men the reputation of a 
knowledge of human nature, which reputation so many covet, 
come to nothing in the studies which, men make of God. 

CD 

And that this is true every man may know for himself. The 
best and noblest thoughts of God, the most sunny and cheering 
and elevating-, are not such as we have through commentators. 
Few things are more disheartening than the reading of very many 
expositions of the Scripture. The mole-like delving, the petty 
distinctions, the insignificant discriminations, the scholastic sub- 
tleties of " the Fathers," so called, the cold, worldly-wise argu- 
mentations of more modern writers, are all so many obstructions 
to the pursuit of the fresh truth. What truths they have are 
arranged like the plants in the most artificial of Dutch gardens, 
while the "Garden of God" is a jungle of natural beauties and 
sweetnesses. On this question of the visio Dei, seeing God, read 
what is said by Tertullian, Chrysostom, Augustine, Enthymius, 
Theodoret, Yorstius, Yoetius, and a score of others, ancient and 
modern, that lie on the table beside the present writer, and at the 
close you will feel as if you must rise and shake the skirts of the 
garments of your soul, and plunge into some deep forest, or climb 
some lofty peak, or go so far out on lake or sea that the sounds of 
men do not reach you, and look up into the great sky, and down 
into the greater depths of your spirit, and open the windows of 
your soul that the air of the breath of God and the light of the 
smile of God may enter. 

" The world by wisdom knew not God " (1 Corinthians i. 21), is a 
general truth. In the original the preposition used (8ia) contains 
a figure of speech, which being incorporated the words might be 
translated, " The world does not find God at the other end of 
wisdom," by which is meant shrewdness, skill in matters of com- 
mon life, and even ability in the department of dialectics. Purity 
of character is needed, total cleanness of the soul, and such as 
have this have the blessed vision of God. One such man, who 
never befools himself with the adoption of an error because it is 
pleasant, and never takes his opinions at second-hand, believing 
them because they are taught by one who has a great name, — a 
man whose lusts and passions are not allowed to make such a 
fume about his soul that the very sun of truth is hidden, — a man 
whose moral atmosphere is translucent,, sees God, knows God, and 
shall see and know Him forever. The glass to be used in the 
' 17 



258 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESFS. 

telescope lifted to gaze into the greatest depths which vision can 
penetrate must be flawless and colorless, otherwise all observations 
will be inaccurate and all calculations thereupon be false and 
misleading. The lesson of the Teacher is against double-minded- 
ness, guile, and all kinds of mental as well as moral impurities, 
as interfering with the highest privileges and pleasures of the 
soul. 

And then follows the last of the characteristics of the Happy. 

It would seem most natural that if any body of men can be found 

„ L who are distinguished by the predominance of 

Happy the peace- ^ ^ -*■ 

makers, for they shaii the characteristics we have been studying, they 

be called sons of God. ^ be men who ^ be engaged m ^ b l esged 

work of pacification, and shall be making peace among men skil- 
fully and on a proper basis, as distinguished from those who 
increase difficulties by their bungling interference, and thereby 
compromising the right in making settlements. Touched by a 
sense of their own spiritual wants, mourning over their own frail- 
ties of temper and character, meek, merciful, and guileless, see- 
ing things in clear light, humane, but hating all wrongs, they will 
be the very people who shall bring together those who have been 
separated. 

And here is the final blow to the secularity of their Messianic 
hopes. They had dreamed of going forth conquering and to 
conquer. How happy should they be, pouring out of all the 
gates of Jerusalem, and from all the hamlets of Judsea, following 
their divine Leader to Rome, hurling Caesar from his throne, 
gathering all the crowns and sceptres of the world into their 
arms, and trampling the heathen and the Gentile under their 
feet ! There is no such happiness in store for them. The climax 
of the description which Jesus gives of his followers, of the peo- 
ple he desires to collect about him, is that they are to be peace- 
makers, exerting the gentle but powerful influence of benign 
lives on the turbulent passions of men, and preventing and curing 
the dissensions of the world. Such men are sons of God, and 
Jesus teaches that their relationship and likeness to the Most High 
G od shall be recognized. They shall be " called," considered, 
u sons of God," not little children, but adult sons of the King of 
Peace. Every man of the disciples of Jesus will, as the ground 
of his kinship to the Holy Father, do whatever in him lies to 
bring an end to all violences among men, so that while that great 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 259 

diversity of intellectual difference shall continue, which God 
intends shall be in men forever, their passions may not be kindled 
tliereby into outbreaks that destroy society. 

The existence of wars shows how far men are yet from coming 
wholly under the dominion of the principles of Jesus. But let 
no man be discouraged. Earth distributes its prizes, and heaven 
bestows its honors. In the estimate of God, a man who is en- 
gaged in breaking the peace of the universal commonweal is 
despicable, and the peacemakers are the highest style of men. 
The warriors wrap themselves in bloody garments to lie down, 
amid the insane plaudits of a vulgar generation, in everlasting 
forgetfulness, while simple-hearted pacificators go up to the high 
places in the loftiest society of the universe. 

Having made this ideal representation of the discipleship of 
that Messiahship which he chose to represent, Jesus glanced at 
the sufferers in the past. They had been very 

-i i -i i ••, i i ,i Happy they who have 

much such persons as he had described, and they been persecuted on 
seemed to have perished out of the world miser- accou ^ of ri g hteous - 

*■ ness, for theirs is the 

ably. They might have been cited as a refuta- kingdom of the heav- 
tion of his statements, for their sighs and groans ^^° maln of tha 
were a strange echo to his repeated " Happy, hap- 
py, happy ! " But they are happy. " Happy they that have 
been persecuted on account of righteousness." Persecution is 
represented in the original text by a word taken from the chase 
and from war, the stronger frightening, pursuing, causing to run, 
those who are the weaker. The good are not always in power, 
and when the evil have rule the good are made to suffer. But if 
a man has come into that affliction because, when the question of 
right and wrong was thrust upon him, he stood up for the right, he 
is not to be compassionated. The tyrant is to be pitied, not the 
victim. Brief pain and everlasting glory is the martyr's reward, 
if he was a martyr because he preferred dying to sinning. Brief 
triumph and everlasting shame belong to him who was the malig- 
nant destroyer. Generations of even bad men who succeed a 
tyrant condemn him, while they praise his victim. It is character, 
not circumstance, that makes the happiness. 

There is no praise to pain. A man is not happy because he has 
suffered, but because he has suffered for the sake of being right. 
It is the cause and not the pain that makes a martyr. And now, 
when Jesus looked upon the noble army of martyrs who had 



260 SECOND AND THIRD PASSCVEJJ IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

chosen to keep an unbroken manhood in suffering rather than 
purchase pleasure by surrender of their souls, he exclaimed, 
" Happy those who have suffered on account of righteousness : the 
kingdom of the heavens is theirs : they stood awhile in the nar- 
row place of torture, dungeon, or rack ; they are now free in all 
the width of the dominion of the universe. If they had surren- 
dered the right to avoid the painful, they would have so belittled 
their spirits as to have been miserable : but now they possess what- 
ever delights the universe can pour in on souls that are truly 
great." 

It was natural that Jesus should then turn with a special ten- 
derness towards those who were linking their fortunes with his, 
and who, by becoming his disciples, were to try 
Happy ye, when they t } ie experiment of being such persons as he had 

shall revile you, and < x ° ... 

persecute you, and say described. If they became poor in spirit, and 
every bad thing against mee k and merciful and pure-hearted, and peace- 

you falsely, on account - 1 - ' A 

of me. Rejoice and makers, the world would hate and persecute them. 

shout for your reward rj^ ^^ ^ CQme ^ acconnf . of J esus _ 

is great in the heavens : 

for thus they persecu- because they were followers of him. In the col- 
wele^fo^eTou? 8 ™ h ° lesions of life men will be reviled and persecuted. 
There is nothing in that to make joy; on the con- 
trary, if any trouble has arisen from a man's own imprudence, it 
is a cause of great regret and pain. But when every kind of bad 
thing has been spoken falsely of a man, and the utterance of it 
has been prompted by the bad that is in those who malign, excited 
by hatred of his goodness, let him rejoice, yea, let him even exult. 
It is proof of the positiveness and vigor of his character and good- 
ness. Every man that has flung himself on his generation to do 
them good has had this kind of trouble. Evil is positive. Good 
must be positive. They will collide. So much the worse for the 
evil. Why cannot we learn that ? A man slanders another, cir- 
culates lies that are injurious, and the misrepresented party is 
regarded as the damaged. Is he % Is it not the slanderer who is 
hurt ? At the close of the day, who ought to shout in his closet : 
the slanderer, who has succeeded in making his lies temporarily 
believed, and thus done vast injury to his own character ; or the 
meek man, who has not allowed the falsehood of his persecutor to 
damage his character by arousing unholy resentments % 

The heavens are very wide. There is room in the universe. 
The growth of the character will be the good man's everlasting 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 261 

joy. The prophets were not destroyed : but what of their persecu- 
tors \ Did you ever hear of Magor-missabib ? No % He was the 
same as Pashur. " And who was Pashur ? " The innocent igno- 
rance implied in that question tells the whole story of the relation of 
persecutors aud the persecuted. Pashur, named Magor-missabib, 
was a great man in his day. He was the son of Immer the 
priest, " who was also chief governor in the house of Jehovah." 
There was an earnest brave man in his day named Jeremiah, and 
this man spoke words of great truth very courageously, but they 
were bitter words to an evil people and priesthood. And so 
Pashur threshed him and put him in the stocks in a most public 
place near the Temple, and left him there all night. (Jeremiah 
xx.) But Pashur was carried to Babylon a slave, and died 
obscurely there. There would be no memory of his name on 
earth at this day, but for the fact that Jeremiah has pilloried him 
in a book whicli the world will never let die, hundreds of thou- 
sands of which are printed every year, although twenty-four cen- 
turies have elapsed, and Jeremiah is among the immortals. Of 
all the kings of David's family who sat on David's throne, there 
was no one who reigned so long as Mam>3seh, the twelfth king of 
Judah. And yet of no one is so little known. The historians 
avoid as much as may be all mention of his reign. If the tradi- 
tions of his people are to be relied on, he caused Isaiah to be sawn 
asunder. No words of the king are remembered. No actions of 
his are regarded as memorial and exemplary. But Isaiah's words 
have inspired the preachers and prophets of all succeeding times, 
and to-day are preserved among the most precious treasures of all 
human literature. And so it has been, is, and will be, until right 
and wrong shall cease to oppose each other. Great is their reward 
m all the heavens who suffer, being in the right. 

VALUE OF A LOFTY CHARACTER. 

What Jesus says of the position of his disciples, those who are 
distinguished by the characteristics he has mentioned, is so plain 
as to need little exposition. He braces them against the storm 
which is to beat upon them, by reminding them of the transcen- 
dent importance and dignity of the functions which they are 
to discharge towards the world. They are the world's conservators 
and illuminators, its salt and its light. "Without them the world 
would rot in utter darkness. That is to be true in all ages. Take 



262 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEE IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



soned ? F.~ r nothing is 

it useral any longer, 

except to be cast out 

and trodden down 

men 

of the world. A city- 



light a lamp and put 
under a corn-measure, 
but upon a lamp-stand : 
and it gives light to all 
in the house. Thus let 
your light shine before 
men, that they may 



instantly out of the world all the men described in the opening 

of the Sermon on the Mount, and the evil that is in it would run 

the world rapidly to a state of total putrefaction. 

Ye aie the salt of the x J x 

earth: but if the salt Take them away and all hope would be gone — 
become insipid, with all brightness, bloom, and beauty. 

what shall it be sea- ° 7 ' J 

More than among the moderns, salt was held in 

very high admiration among the ancients. Their 

by poets gave it the most noble and beautiful epi- 

w^rw^l 11 ^ ^ ne ^ s > an( ^ their philosophers bestowed great praise 

set on a hiii cannot be upon it. It was used in religious services, sym- 

wd. Neither do they boli(jal of h t . fi refining, very 

a lamp and put it •> ' *> o;7 J 

powerful, and very preservative.* The words of 
Jesus, in which he likens his disciples at once to 
salt and light, are remarkably reproduced by 
Pliny {Hist. Nat., xxxi. 9) in his words, " Nil sole 
your good works, and et sale utilius," Nothing is more useful than the 
ous S thoughte°of g you^ sun an ^ sa ^- And because of their value to the 
Father who is in the world, Jesus urges them to be careful to preserve 
the saltness, and avoid what would cover the 
light ; in other words, preserve in their characters those very 
elements which give them these powers. 

Much useless labor has been spent on the salt and city ques- 
tions. Whether real salt can lose its saltness, is not a pertinent 
question. The question of Jesus is hypothetical: if the saline 
quality be lost out of salt, how can it be restored ? By chemical 
action we know that salt can " lose its savor." But because the 
example should have suggested something that was familiar, and 
it is not a familiar fact that salt does utterly lose its saltness, 
many have perplexed themselves with striving to find what the 
to okas is, if it be not salt. A Dutch writer, Yon der Hardt, 
suggested that it was asphaltus from the Dead Sea ! And then 
" the trodden down of men " has given the commentators great 
perplexity. A German author brings forward authorities from the 
Rabbins to prove that salt, which by exposure had so far lost its 
chlorine that it could not preserve, was sometimes scattered upon 



* Homer calls salt deiov, divine, and 
Plato OeocpiAes aujua, a substance dear to 
the gods. There was a Latin proverb, 
Purior salillo, purer than salt. Both 
Greeks and Latins used it as a trope for 



wit, on account of its pungency. Hence 
we hear of Attic salt. In incense and in 
religious sacrifices salt was used. See 
Ovid, Fasti, i. 337. 



TKE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 263 

slippery places to prevent falling, as by the priests in the Temple 
when sacrificing animals. But his citations feebly sustain his po- 
sition, and if they did they would not disprove the words of Jesus 
who says that it is worthless, and this being " trodden down of men " 
expresses only the utter contempt men have for its woithlessness. 

So of the city. There is no reason to suppose that some special 
city was referred to. Any city on a hill-top must be conspicuous, 
especially when lighted at night. He was simply charging his disci- 
ples not to hide their light nor to lose the vigor of a good character. 

" Let your light shine." If you have light it will do its own 
shining, and give light to others, if you do not cover it. Only let it 
shine. You need not go flaunting it about as a wild boy does a 
flambeau at night ; but let it be like the sun's light, naturally il- 
luminating ; but do not obscure it. There are just two important 
things to care for, namely, that a man have in him the illumi- 
nating property, and then that he see to it that that light be not 
obscured. 

The Law : and Jesus the Completer thereof. 

Whenever any man has the fortune to see truth in a new light, 
and the commission to make it known to the world, there are 
those who adroitly endeavor to break his power Th ink not that i 
by giving out that he is a revolutionist ; that he is came t0 relax the law 

, i -, n . -.. -, • i t or the prophets: I 

unstable ; that he is discontented with the estab- came not to relax, but 
lished order of things. Such a rumor does two tocom P lete - Forv ™- 

° ly I say unto you, Un- 

wrongs. It drives from him those who hold to tn the heaven and the 
the truth that has been already gained, and sends ^^ 
about the new teacher those who really hope that nor the smallest stroke 
the allegation is true and that old things are to t^T^ZTl 
be abrogated. Their approach to the teacher be accomplished, who- 

r» ,n .-,..-, ■, soever, therefore, shall 

confirms the prejudicial rumor, and so soon as relax one of the leasc 
they discover their mistake they fall away, and of these commands, 

, -I . n -. n r , , and shall teach men so, 

this liux and reflux of apparent popularity weak- he Bhall be caUed least 
ens the hold of the teacher on the public confi- in the kingdom of the 

, T re n • i • i heavens (the dominion 

dence. Jesus suirered m that way, as in modern of t he universe); but 
times have Luther and Wesley, who sustained whosoever shau do ani 

_ tat i i teach, he shall be called 

towards the lioman and Anglican churches, res- great in the kingdom 
pectively, a position similar to that of Jesus to- of the heavens - 
wards the Jewish church. 
In this discourse of his doctrine, Jesus is at pains to define 



264 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

his relation to the system of morals taught in the sacred books 
of the Jews. If, as he taught, his followers were to endure 2 
great persecution " for righteousness' sake," and " on account 
of Jesus," it was natural to infer that it would be on account of 
the kind of righteousness which they should learn from him ; and 
if that were such as to raise persecution, it must be because it was 
opposed to the righteousness taught in their law and in their pro- 
phets. Jesus takes occasion to correct this by showing that he 
held to the law ; that it was the Pharisees who had a new right- 
eousness, and that it was this fact (that he should teach a right- 
eousness which, wmile it opposed that of the Pharisees, accorded 
with that of the law, and really accomplished and fulfilled it by 
giving it a spirit, and by vitalizing it) that should bring him 
trouble from a generation that had gone far astray from Moses 
and the Prophets. 

" The Law " and " the Prophets " constituted the great basis of 
Jewish morals and religious institutions. The law, as Tholuck 
says, kept alive in the people a sense of their need of salvation ; 
the prophets perpetually sustained them by the hope that want 
would one day be satisfied. Jesus must have meant something 
more than merely presenting in the facts of his history the coun- 
terpart of what the prophets set forth, or in the morality of his 
life an example of perfect observance of the moral law. He 
meant to say that all those who looked upon the work of the Mes- 
siah as that of mere abolition, mere loosing, mere doing away, 
had made a total misapprehension. His work was not negative 
but positive. So far from doing away the law, he came to show 
the world that even the moral law, written on Sinai stone or liv- 
ing human hearts, is imperfect, in the sense of incomplete. He 
came to supplement, to fill up. The Law was one thing, the Pro- 
phets another ; and with them both, without something else, hu- 
manity was poor indeed. He was that something else, that ple- 
roma, that Fulness ; so that hereafter, for all purposes of living 
and dying, the world might have all it needed : the Zaw, the 
Prophets, the JESUS. Without the law the world is a moral 
chaos. With the Law, and without the Prophets, the world is a 
company of condemned malefactors. With the Law and Pro- 
phets the condemned world is hoping with a hope deferred that 
makes the heart sick. With the Law, the Prophets, and Jesus, 
mankind have their hopes fulfilled, and such an element of power 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



265 



from love, and such an element of love newly developed in the 
Law, that life becomes the sublime occupation of preparing the 
soul, by obedience, for still greater obedience to a morale rule 
which keeps the universe in rhythm. " I am come," said he, 
"not a Eelaxer but a Completer." This great Jesus must have 
been conscious of vast spiritual resources, a fulness of soul that 
was to stream out into the nations and down through the ages. 
He felt that he had enough soul for himself and a whole race of 
men. It is not necessary to go into the minute details of the 
theological anatomists. They have said nothing finer than Augus- 
tine, " Because he came to give love, and love is the f uliilling of 
the law, he lias rightly said that he had not come to dissolve, but 
to complete." * 

The moral law is to stand while earth and heaven endure, a 
proverbial form of expression, like, as Strong says, our less ele- 
gant one of " While grass grows or water runs." While there is 
any universe of moral beings there will be moral law. Not a 
particle is superfluous. Not a particle, therefore, shall ever be 
swept away ; not a ^ (yode), the smallest of the Hebrew letters ; 
not a Kepata, the smallest stroke of the pen used to distinguish 
letters.f But a grace that is in neither letters nor laws shall be 
given the world, and mankind shall see how beautiful and unsel- 
fish and free a thing a life of obedience may be ; of obedience to 
God's laws, — not man's moral police enactments, perhaps, but 
God's laws. He that regards reverently the slightest indication of 
what the will and purpose of God is, shall be recognized great 
in the dominion of the universe, the kingdom and rule which is 
so wide as to embrace not merely this present scheme of our 
world, but all the changes of all worlds, and all the sweep of the 
universe, — not merely the ages which mark the history of man, 
but the cycles on which eternity rests. 

Thus Jesus taught that he did not come, as some feared and 



* "Quia venit dare charitatem, et 
charitas preficit legem, merito dixit, 
non venisse solvere, sed iinplere." Au- 
gustine, Serm. 126, on John v. 

f That this may be understood, let 
the reader who does not know Hebrew 
compare with his eye the Hebrew let- 
ters "i, raish, and -j, dauleth. He will 
see in print that the only difference is a 



slight prolongation to the right of the 
upper part of the letter. In writing 
them for the printer I have made a 
raish in both instances, and in the lat- 
ter merely added a little stroke in the 
right place, a stroke much smaller than 
the Hebrew letter yode of the same 
type. 



266 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

others hoped, an adversary to the God-ordained moral govern- 
ment of the world. He came to explain, exemplify, fulfil. His 
life, his deeds, his words, all were part of the icoo-pos, the orderly 
universe. He wished no one to become his follower under the 
false idea that he can thereby indulge a dissolute life with im- 
punity. He has no higher law than the law of God, but he sets 
that in the highest possible light. 

REFUTATION OF PHARISAIC ERRORS. 

Because Jesus had not kept the law according to their methods 

of interpretation, the Pharisees persecuted him as a dissolver of 

For i say unto you, the law. He turns upon them. He denounces 

That if your righteous- as sma n an d i ow the righteousness in which thev 

nesa do not greatly ex- ° . . / 

ceedthatof the scribes so much exulted, and declared to his disciples, in 
«md the Pharisees ye wor d s which he introduces with the utmost so- 

shall not enter into the 

kingdom of the heav- lemnity, that to have the freedom of the domin- 
ion of the universe they must have a wider and 
higher righteousness, a righteousness founded not on a micro- 
scopic view of ritualism, but on a comprehension of the spirit of 
the laws which spread wide as all worlds and endure long as 
eternity. The Pharisees taught that their righteousness could, and 
in many cases did, exceed the requirements of God's moral law ; 
but Jesus taught that that law was so wonderfully deep, and broad, 
and high, that it is not in the compass of human capacities to ex- 
ceed its requirements. 

Of Murder. 

Jesus does not leave so important a matter to the impression 
which a general statement might make upon a promiscuous assem- 
bly. He intends to make his feud with Pharisaism deadly. 
He will now cut it up in detail. The plain people shall know 
what he means. He tells them that the law which was given 
anciently to their ancestors has been read in Temple and syna- 
gogue by the Pharisees, who held the position of official ex- 
pounders, and who so wove their glosses into the original text 
that the common people had lost all discrimination, so that the 
general belief was that Pharisaism and Mosaicism was the same. 
He intends to tear away all the wretched sophisms and dangerous 
as well as foolish " various readings " of the Pharisees, and show 
them what the moral law means. He does not impugn the Mosaic 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



26^ 



law : he simply does two things, namely, 1. He clears away the 
rubbish that has been piled on the law ; and, 2. When it is seen 
as it is, he explains what its real meaning is, a Ye have heard that it 
meaning not to be eonfined to the ancients, bnt ™^*~ 
such as shall be good for any part of the domain whosoever shaii km 

r ,, . shall be liable to the 

Of the Universe. ^ judgment. But I say 

The errors into which the ancients fell, and unto you, Any one an- 

, . , i t i • ,i -r>i • gry with his brother* 

which were hugely exaggerated m the -Pharisees, Rha]1 be liable to the 
grew out of a literal interpretation, winch natu- judgment; and whoso 

^ , . . A TV shall say to his brother, 

rally came to be erroneous and injurious. A lit- Eaka ^ shall be liable 
eralist, an advocate, or pettifogger, takes up a to the sanhedrim ; and 

i . . .., , z whoso shall say, Moreh, 

passage in a statute and says, What do these ghall be liable to the 
words mean ? " Of course he soon comes to con- gehenna of fire, if, 

therefore, thou bring 

sider what they may mean. A great jurist, thy g^ to the a itar, 
especially if he have -judicial responsibility, takes and there remembered 

i cc-xxn J* 17 7 that thy brother haa 

up the same passage and says, What did the teg- something against thee, 
islatnre mean when it enacted this statute and leave there t hy gift be- 

fore the altar, and first 

framed this special passage ? " The former needs go , become reconciled 
only to have the very words before him. The * ^ brotbe £ « d 

J *> then coming offer thy 

latter must know the character and general in- gift. Agree with thy 
fentions of the legislature, the occasion of the pas- % ^'^l'-S%. 
sage of the statute, the objections urged by the Mm on the road, lest 
minority and how answered by the majority, the ^ZZ^T^^IZ 
whole animus of the law-makers as touching this the judge to the sheriff, 
special matter. This is just what Jesus did. And ^^.^ediTi h^*? 
it is important now, for a fair understanding of thee, Thou shait not 

__ , . , . ,-, . -,, , come thence until thou 

all his own words, m this sermon and elsewhere, hast paid the last far „ 
that we bring to their elucidation and interpre- tes- 
tation the same spirit and method of criticism which he applied to- 
the decalogue. We must know what Jesus said, and find the mean- 
ing of any doubtful or perplexing phrase or sentence by what lie 
plainly teaches elsewhere, and by the whole temper of his intellect 
and soul. Whoever fails to do this becomes towards the teachings 
of Jesus just what the Pharisees became towards the moral law. 
We shall almost immediately have occasion to show the impor- 
tance of this principle. 



* In the common version the phrase 
" without a cause " occurs, but it is gen- 
erally conceded that this is an interpo- 
lation which has crept in from some 



marginal note written by some very con- 
servative reader or editor. It is not in 
the Sinaitic Codex, and is also omitted 
by other ancient MSS. 



208 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN" THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



And now comes the first example. Moses said : " Kill not." 
The Pharisees said : " If a man commit actual homicide he shal 
be liable to go before the Court of the Seven." Jesus said : " Angei 
with one's brother is a violation of the moral law in this particu- 
lar." It will be seen how these differ, and a little fulness here 
may save space hereafter. The Pharisees taught such a morality 
that if a man who had had the most inhuman or the most deadly 
feelings towards his brother had so managed the circumstances of 
the homicide, or so suppressed or arranged evidence, as to be able 
to secure a verdict of acquittal from the Court of Seven, he felt 
himself altogether absolved. But Jesus showed that the law was 
not a mere police regulation. It was that, but vastly more. It 
touched the kingdom of the heavens. It rendered human life 
sacred, but it was also a development, out into the sphere of hu- 
manity, of that measurelessly profound law of love which per- 
vades the Dominion of the Universe, a law which was violated if 
one had hatred of his brother, or contempt, or scorn. Nay, one 
must not even so much as fail of loving. It is not sufficient not 
to hate. Jesus teaches positive regard for our fellow-men. He 
was the great Humanitarian on the broadest and deepest founda- 
tion of principle, not merely by the impulse of sentiment. 

Jesus taught in popular style, and presented his doctrine so 
concretely that his words would stick in the memory of his hear- 
ers. In illustration, he quotes words in common use. as expres- 
sions of a malign condition of the heart, not that they " have any 
damning power in themselves," as Alford says, " but to represent 
states of anger and hostility." If one should call his brother 
Rafca, he should be regarded by God as one is regarded by men 
when the Sanhedrim has condemned him. If one should call his 
brother Moreh, he should be in the sight of God as, in the sight 
of men, is he who having been stoned to death is cast into the 
Valley of Hinnom.* Raka is a Chaldee word expressive of the 



* There is a deep ravine to the south 
and west of Jerusalem, which took its 
name, as Stanley conjectures, from 
some ancient hero who had encamped 
there, u the son of Hinnom." In this 
ravine heathenish rites were observed 
in the worship of Moloch, and in its 
south-eastern corner, Tophet, infants 
were sacrificed to the fire -gods. King 



Josiah caused the place to be polluted 
by strewing it with human bones and 
other things, making it ceremonially 
unclean, so as to put an end to these 
abominations. See 2 Kings xxiii. 10, 
13, 14 ; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4, 5. There- 
after it was the common cesspool of the 
city, into which all filth was cast, and 
it is believed that the bodies of crim- 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



269 



greatest contempt, " Worthless fellow ! " " Empty head ! " Moreh 
is a harsher expression, and signifies a hopeless fool, an impious 
wretch, a rebel, especially a rebel against God, and hence ac 
atheist, a word so bitter that for using it Moses and Aaron were 
not permitted to enter the promised land. (Numbers xx. 10.) 

Now, here are the gradations : First, concealed but cherished 
anger, then sudden ejaculation of wrath, and then foul and 
abusive language. And all these Jesus says are murder in several 
forms. He holds us to his text that character is everything. Men 
consider the outward act as the horrible thing in crime ; and they 
can do no better, because they cannot read the heart. But each 
man knows his own heart, and God knows all. His law covers 
the whole man, inside as well as outside ; Jesus gives its proper 
intensity to the "Thou" of the law, penetrating the inmost soul, 
and its proper extension covering the whole life. "Thou," as 
Luther well puts it, in his vehement and popular style, is not ad- 
dressed to a man's fist alone but to his whole person. Indeed, if 
ti le fist were addressed it would be an address to the whole per- 
& >n, for the hand could not deal the blow unless the whole person 
co-operated. The whole act comes of the character, and it is not 
so important to be striving to make our actions right as to keep 
our souls pure. The words and the deeds of a man are impor- 
tant as showing the character. 

We may not interpret Jesus literally in this and his other 
speeches. It is not the use of RaJca and Moreh that is con- 
demned, for they were sometimes used playfully, there being 
evidence that the latter, which is so harsh in its real meaning, 
was employed as a gentle nickname in the days of Jesus,* — but 
it is the murderous spirit which precedes their use. Jesus himself 
was angry ,f and used the very epithet Moreh,% which is here so 
condemned; but it is very obvious from the history that the 
emotions he had and the words he uttered, in the connection, give 
uo indication of a murderous spirit. Nor, strictly, could he have 



inals who had been stoned to death 
were flung into this place. In Joshua 
xviii. 16, the Septuagint has TaUwa. 
Afterwards it was rendered Teewa, Ge- 
henna. 

* Tholuck, vol. i.,p. 238. Edin. edit. 

f As Mark expressly asserts (iii. 5), 



and Matthew (xxiii. 13) and John (ii. 15) 
clearly imply. 

% In Matthew xxiii. 17, 19, it is the 
identical word, and in Luke xxiv. 25, it 
is the equivalent, in the original ; and 
consequently in both cases is properly 
translated " fools " in our version. 



270 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



meant that the secular government wonld decide npon these cases, 
and inflict these punishments ; and most probably by alluding to 
the visible tribunals and penalties simply gave objectiveness to the 
spiritual fact of responsibility for character, so far as voluntarily 
formed, and taught gradations of punishment proportioned to the 
sinfulness. 

And now, that he may set the duty of loving and the sin of 
hating in the strongest possible light, he insists upon the necessity 
of reconciling differences, and this he does in language which 
must have been very impressive to his Jewish hearers. He taught 
that if a man had gone up to the Temple to offer sacrifice for his 
sins, had even brought the victim into that court where the priest 
was to receive it, and in the most solemn moment of approach to 
Jehovah the worshipper should recollect that his brother had aught 
against him, no matter how he felt toward that brother, he should 
leave his gift there in the Temple, and postpone homage to God 
until he had made love with man. Perhaps the worshipper would 
recollect that he had given offence to his brother by calling him 
ugly names, as Raka and Moreh, " Empty Head " and " Rebel." 
His brother may have had occasion to have something against 
him. In that case until the bad feeling, which was mother to the 
bad words, be utterly flung from his heart, his worship would be 
an abomination to God. Hecatombs of slaughtered beasts would 
not please the eye of the Holy One of Israel if he saw malignity 
in the heart of the offerer. If the bad feeling has been cast out, 
then he must go and tell his brother ; must let him know how 
changed his feelings are. But if he has never knowingly given 
offence, and finds that his brother is embittered against him, let 
him go and do all that love should prompt to have that bitterness 
removed, to effect a reconciliation. 

Let us always guard against literalism, and see what the spirit 
of the words is. That he should literally go from the Temple in 
Jerusalem, the journey of many weary days, to a distant part of 
Palestine, to make up a quarrel, cannot be meant, any more than 
the postponement of reconciliation until the moment when the 
sacrifice is about to be laid upon the altar.* But in his heart the 



* Instances of Pharisaic literalness 
occur to this day in the Christian church. 
Perhaps there are few pastors who have 
not known communicants begin to feel 



uneasy about their animosities as the 
time for the Lord's Supper approached, 
postponing reconciliation to the very 
latest moment before the sacrament, — 






THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



271 



tv ork cf love must be done. A man must not do that which ex- 
poses him to the judgment of the local court, to the sentence of 
the Sanhedrim, to destruction ; nor must he allow his brother tc 
do it, if in his power to prevent. If that brother has anything 
against him, it may lead to sin on the brother's part. If he has 
been called " Empty-head," he may retort by calling his brother 
" Rebel." And if the sacrifice is for forgiveness of sin already 
committed, let there be no new sin committed. Jehovah will 
wait for the sacrifice if he know that the offerer has gone to do 
the holy work of love. Do it instantly : that is the lesson. 
Nothing is so important: not even worship. A man may die 
while offering his beasts in sacrifice, and woe to him if he die with 
hands on the altar and hate in his heart. That such a fate might 
overtake one, and should be avoided, are taught in the impressive 
words which immediately follow. If a man is haled to the judg- 
ment-seats of civil governments, it is prudent to do everything 
practicable to be reconciled to his adversary. For if once the 
adversary should lodge complaint, and the case go against the 
accused, he may be cast into prison ; and the inexorable judge, 
standing by his own decision, will not allow him to go free until 
he has paid the whole debt, or met the whole claim in dispute. 
What is so important as regards the management of worldly mat- 
ters is infinitely more important as regards character. The culti- 
vation of love, the prompt discharge of the duties of love, lest 
death come in and a man be cut off therefrom, and there be sur- 
vivors who shall be injured in their character, — these are the 
lessons. 

Having gone so fully into the spirit of this first example, it will 
not be necessary to be so elaborate upon the others. 

Of Adultery. 

The second example is the Law of Adultery. It must be 
observed that in his statements Jesus keeps constantly in view 



as if that were obedience to Jesus. He 
taught that the very moment you recol- 
lect that your brother has aught against 
you, even if that recollection should 
flash upon you at the Lord's Table, be 
reconciled, be sure that you are in a 
right mind about it, no matter how he 



feels. It does not suppose that one will 
come to the sacrament knowing that he 
hates his brother, or that, if his brother 
hate him, he has failed to strive to b$ 
reconciled. Some people's Christianity 
is so unlike that of Jesus. 



272 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

that he is inculcating the culture of character, outward things bein^ 
important only as they spring from character. The mere indul- 
yc h that it & enco °£ a natural appetite is a small thing ; but the 

was Bald, Tftou shaft being so degraded, so lost to the claims of our fel- 
tl"r" t T'Z; low-men and of society, as to cherish the desire to 

put l Bay unto you, That J ' 

every one who looks invade the most sacred rights, that is horrible, 
liuZrThLrl!^ that is the thing to be dreaded. And it is further 
bis longing, has already to be observed that he sets the law in the right 

committed adultery -,. -. . i-»t • • n i 

with her m hi s heart, light. Pharisaism perpetually regards it as a 
An.i u thy right eye burdensome restriction, which must be as much 

muse thee to sin, tear , , ... ,^ x , , 

w out and fling it from evaded as possible. Jbut Jesus teaches that our 
thee; for it is better for own personal interest lies in keeping the law 

theo that one of thy * . ,,. ■ r> 

members perish, and sacredly. " It is better Jot thee, or " it is proiit- 
not thy whole body be ^^ f or t ] iee » j a a p l lrase showing that the indi- 

cast into Gehenna. ° \ •* 1 i • 

vidual who is to keep the law is to have the 
profit of the keeping. You must not avoid adultery because 
it is going to be injurious to your neighbor, but because even 
to intend any such wrong is so damaging to yourself. And 
this is the pure and fine strain of all the teaching of Jesus. What 
is done in the heart hurts. And so he enjoins such self-denial as 
shall lead to the renunciation of whatever is loveliest in our eyes 
and the nearest to us ; the most beautiful and the most useful 
friends we have, if, holding them near us, they lead us to commit 
such offence against ourselves. Of course the words of Jesus are 
not to be taken literally, for in that case the member of the body 
would be considered the sinner, and not the soul that is in the 
body. It is not the eye nor hand that sins, but the inner man. 
Moreover, if taken literally, the whole world would probably be 
speedily depopulated. This strong hyperbolic expression of Jesus 
seems to find its rational interpretation as we have given it. 

Of Divorce. 

And tills naturally brings up the third example, the Law of 
DivoTce, as held by the Pharisees. 

Here, again, the Pharisees had perverted the law. According 
to the law, so sacred was the tie of marriage that only infidelity 
upon the part of the wife could justify a man in putting the wife 
away. Moses had made this exception not to weaken but to 
strengthen the marriage bond, not to make divorce easy but diffi- 
cult. But the Pharisees had made it quite easy, the school 






THE SEKMON ON THE MOUNT. 273 

of Hillel even going so far as to allow a man to put away his 
wife when he found any one whom he liked better. But Jesus 
insisted upon the sacredness of the relation. By 

.. ,. ,. , .-,. , It has been said, If 

his teachings any divorced man is disgraced, ^y man d i VO rce Ma 
Either he had committed some sin or his wife, wife, let him give her a 

at i writing of divorce. But 

who thus disgraces him. And a woman who is T say unt0 you, That 
divorced from her husband, except for his sin, is whoso &*&x*a ^ 

x i.Ti wife, except for the rw»- 

not at liberty to marry. If she marry while he son of uncieanness, 
lives she is an adulteress, and the man who mar- causes her to commit 

7 m adultery; and whoso 

ries her is an adulterer ; and if her husband marry shaii marry a divorced 
he is an adulterer. This is quite as plain as Greek ™ commits adul - 
and English can make it, and no legislature on 
earth can make right by its enactments what is morally wrong. 
When a man and a woman have married, and neither has broken 
the bond by infidelity, neither can put himself or herself in the posi- 
tion of being parent of a child by another party while the other is 
living in purity. The offspring would be illegitimate. It was 
this laxity of divorce that had so corrupted the morals of Jewish 
society. 

Of Perjury. 

The fourth example of Pharisaic perversion is in the Law of 
Oaths, Their gloss was, that if the name of Jehovah was omitted 
the oath was not binding. And so they swore And ye have heard 
by their heads, by Jerusalem, by the Temple, by that it has been said to 

J -. -, i xi -i i the ancients > Thou 

heaven, and by earth. Jesus taught that both shait not swear faiseiy, 
perjury and blasphemy were to be avoided, and but shalt perform thine 

r J J r */ J oaths to the Lord : but 

that the latter could not be evaded by the em- i say unto you, swear 
ployment of petty oaths, and the former was not * ot at * n J n f her *> y 

i «/ sr j > heaven, for it is the 

avoided by making false statements under a form throne of God, nor by 
of oath from which the name of Jehovah was TTf^T^KT 

stool of his feet ; neither 

omitted. He plainly teaches his disciples to avoid by Jerusalem, for it is 
all forms of oaths in conversation, and simply to ^X? J^ ThTu 
make a distinct, decided affirmation, based upon swear by thy head, for 

t -it iTi i <• ,i .n thou canst not make 

knowledge or deliberate conclusions of the mind, one hair white or black . 
saying so simply, so intelligently, and so firmly, But let your word be 
"Yes," or "No," that it will satisfy the hearer No: » f 0r what is mow 
quite as much as any oath could. than these is from evii. 

He could not have intended to forbid the use of civil oaths, as 
he himself paid respect to them, at least in one instance (see 
18 



274 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER LN THE LDJE OF JESTJS. 

Matthew xxvi. 63), as we shall find ; but the tenor of his teaching 
certainly is adverse to the multiplication of civil oaths and the 
frequency of their employment. A man of truth may be trusted 
when he makes a deliberate assertion : a liar, not even when he 
takes a solemn oath. Precision and firmness and simplicity, 
first in thought and then in language, are commended by these 
teachings of Jesus. . 

Of Revenge. 

The fifth example of the Pharisaic misteaching is in regard to 

the Law of Retaliation. Again we are to remind ourselves that 

in interpreting the teachings of Jesus we are to 

Ye have heard that it i • i 

has been said, Eye for guard ourselves against that very vice of the 
eye and tooth /or tooth; pi iar i sees w hich he was endeavoring* to correct, 

but I say unto you, Not # m ° J 

to resist the evil man; namely, a slavishly literal interpretation which 
but whosoever shaii totally destroys the spirit and the meaning of the 

■ 6mite thee on the right .0 

cheek, turn to him also words, whether of the law or of the great Teacher. 

SST'-IT Z The law certainl y is * t0 ° th fir <* ^oth and 
and to take thine inner an eye for an eye^ as we find in Exodus xxi. 

e^Ihmetuterlb^ 24 ", in Leviticus xxiv. 20, and in Deuteronomy 

and whosoever shaii x ix. 21. And Jesus specifically asserts that he 

mue^go with him two! did n0 ^ come to destroy that law. It stands. 

to him that asketh of Whatever he teaches must be expository of the 

thee, give: and from , ., . . P , . n , ,. . 

him wishing to borrow law or an exhibition 01 the animus ox the divine 
of thee, turn thou not i aw£ M ver j n this statute. The essential principle 

away. 

of the law pervades the universe, so far as we can 
discern, and appears under multiform phases. With what meas- 
ure a man metes, it is meted to him again. The instruments of 
sin are made instruments of retribution. In the administration 
of government under Moses, the law is quite distinctly stated, 
and was obviously meant to be acted upon, whatever men may 
say of the cruelty of the procedure or of the difficulty of apply- 
i ng it in practice. It was the law. In the hands of those admin- 
istering justice it was one thing : in the hands of private vengeance 
it was another. This latter was the gloss of Pharisaism. Their 
sin lay in quoting words, which the people believed to be of di- 
vine origin, in order to defend vindictiveness of spirit. To what 
terrible social results such teaching would lead among a con- 
quered people, chafing under their political subjugation, we can 
readily see. The law was intended to prevent private vengeance. 



THE SEEM0N ON THE MOTTNT. 275 

It was a merciful law. It advised the offender, in advance, of 
what he might expect : it would thus deter him. It kept the 
offended party from taking vengeance into his own hands, by 
assuring him that up to the exact line of retaliation the punish- 
ment of the offender would be carried. 

Against the wicked gloss of the Pharisees Jesus places his 
interpretation of the spirit of the law. He opposes their teaching, 
not the law. And he does so adhering to his text, namely, char- 
acter is everything. 

Now, that he may set forth graphically what he means, he paints 
three pictures of wrongs done to one — a personal, a legal, and a 
political wrong — and shows the difference between the spirit of 
his teaching and that of the Pharisees. 

In the first place there is the instance of a personal assault in a 
form exceedingly aggravating, a rap upon the right cheek. A 
Pharisee standing by says to the person struck, " Hit him on his 
right cheek." " No," says Jesus, " do not hit him at all, and rather 
than indulge a vindictive spirit, let him strike you upon the other 
cheek. Leave correction to the law, and vengeance to Jehovah." 
This is what Jesus meant, and, so far as I can see, nothing more 
was meant. To take his dramatic language for the terms of a 
statute is absurd as criticism, and is utterly impracticable in 
ordinary life, and if 'attempted to be practised literally would 
break up society as effectually as the private vengeance sought 
by the Pharisees. It would invite outrage and embolden cow- 
ardly villainy. Jesus never did so in practice, and it were unjust 
to all the fine sense of right which elsewhere appears in his teach- 
ings to suppose that he uttered in theory what he abandoned in 
practice. In John (xviii. 22, 23) we see just how Jesus behaved 
under precisely the circumstances stated here, and that behavior 
must be the best comment on this text. When an officer struck 
him he neither took vengeance nor literally turned about inviting 
a repetition of the indignity ; but solemnly expostulated with him 
in the presence of the High-Priest. 

This teaches us how to interpret the next case. Is a man by 
his behavior to solicit the repetition of a legal wrong as well as of 
a personal attack ? Certainly not ; but rather than have a wicked, 
revengeful spirit, if a man sue for your shirt, give him your coat 
In the mention of these garments comes out again, as it so fre- 
quently does, that characteristic in the style of Jesus which made 



276 



SECOND AND THIED PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



him a popular while he was a profound teacher, namely, calling 
things by their plain names, and taking all his illustrations from 
things so open and familiar. The audience listening to him knew 
that, according to the Mosaic law (Exodus xxii. 26), even when 
the legal process gave the plaintiff the outer garment, he was com 
pelled to restore it to the defendant at nightfall. But Jesus sets 
himself so strongly against the Pharisaic teaching of private ven- 
geance, and against the modern jpoint oVhonneur, the code of 
honor, the duel, and all kinds of vindictiveness, as to say that a 
man who stands and takes the second blow, or when one takes 
his inner lets his outer garment go, is a better, a wiser, a happier 
man than he who follows up an insult or injury by retaliation. 

There remains little difficulty with the third case supposed, 
which is that of political oppression. The verb in the original 
Greek, ayyapevcrei* comes from a Persian word, angaros, sig- 
nifying a mounted courier, such as were kept ready at regular 
stages throughout Persia, according to a postal arrangement insti- 
tuted by Cyrus or Xerxes.f They were authorized to impress 
into the king's service, for the transmission of intelligence, not only 
the horses but the persons of the king's subjects. They could 
compel them to go. Of course the Jews felt the utmost reluc- 
tance to yield such a service to the Roman government, which 
they hated 4 And we can see what opportunities a vicious official 
would enjoy of spitefully oppressing the people. Jesus taught, 
by this specific example, the general lesson that no man must 
take vengeance on his political oppressor; that when he felt his 
anger rising, rather than take vengeance, rather than even resist 
so as to increase the existing animosity, he should so promptly 
show a willingness to go twice the required distance that the spite 
of the exactor and the oppressor should be disarmed. Thus 
Jesus taught the wisdom and blessedness of goodness, the rule of 
conquering by surrendering. He did not mean to describe acts, 



* In the Cod. Sin. the word is ivyapelirr). 

f Greek historians assign the origin 
of the postal system to both these kings. 
For descriptions of the system see 
Herod., viii. 98, andXen., Cyrop., viii. 
6, 17. 

% The Jews particularly objected to 
furnishing posts to the Eoman govern- 
ment : and Demetrius, when he wished 



to conciliate them, published a long list 
of grievances from which he freed them, 
in which it is stated that he gave orders 
that the beasts of burden belonging to 
the Jews should not be pressed into his 
service, using the very word employed 
in the text of Matthew which we are 
now considering. See Josephus, Ant. % 
xxiii. c. 2, § 3. 



THE SEEMON ON THE MOUNT. 277 

but to represent character. What kind of character ? A mean, 
unimpressible, negative character, that stands and takes kicks 
like a bale of cotton % By no means ; but a character so filled 
with all goodness and active love that it would pass over and do 
more even than the law of man demanded, doing so much for 
even the evil and unthankful that they could exact no more. It 
is not the doing of these particular acts which he enjoins, but the 
having the spirit and disposition to do them. And we must be 
quite careful not to frame a statute for ourselves, for our neigh- 
bors, or for the community out of these descriptive phrases, hold- 
ing that he is no Christian who does not perform these very acts, 
but rather understand that for ourselves we are to learn what is 
the type of human character which appeared greatest and loveli- 
est in the eyes of Jesus. 

This principle applies to the last case described, the annoyance 
of beggars and borrowers. To interpret the precept literally were 
to break up all society : it would bestow alms upon impostors, put 
dagger and poison in the hands of the insane, yield instruments 
of destruction to children who had no discretion, and furnish 
weapons to the murderer for the accomplishment of his dire de- 
signs — and all this simply because we were asked! A literal 
observance of the words might bring things to such a pass in a 
day that we shall not be able to serve any others for a year. He 
neither meant that we should wait until asked to bestow benefac- 
tions, nor give in the very form of the request ; but that we should 
be always ready to do good in every possible way to our fellow- 
men. This teaching of Jesus is as strictly observed by him who 
makes a discreet refusal of what it were injurious to bestow, as by 
him who yields a prompt concession to a request that is proper. 
It is the disposition to do all good promptly and cheerfully to all 
men, without being moved thereto by the good qualities in them, 
and not being deterred therefrom by what is repulsive. And 
this comes out in the general precept immediately following. 

Of Love and Hatred. 

The sixth and last example which he cites of the perversions by 
the Pharisees is that which regards the Law of Love and Hatred. 
It gives him occasion to state his own philosophy on this subject. 
The law is laid down in Leviticus xix. 18 : " Thou shalt not 
avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, 



Ye 
it hath 



278 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS* 

but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself : I am the Lord." The 
intent of this law was to bind the Jewish people compactly together 
have heard that for the g reat > humane purposes of Almighty God 
been said, to wards all people. It was not, as was not anything 

Love your neighbor .,-, .-,-, . , , n , i ,i t • l 

ana hate your enemy. m the ceremonial law, intended to make the J ewish 
But i say to you, Love people, by an act of Almighty partiality, the special 

your enemies and pray . . r j • • *• /> ,7 • 7 

for them that persecute recipients or divine favors jot tke%r own sake* 
you, that ye may be the a l one ^ but that they might be eminently fitted to 

sons of your Father in ' . ° . 

the heavens; for He subserve not only their own interests but the high- 
makes his sun to rise est interests of all the people of all the world and 

on the bad and good, . x x 

and rains on the just ox all time. It was their stupendous mistake to 
and the unjust. For if r d themselves as the end of all divine legisla- 

ye love your lovers, # ° ~ 

what reward have ye? tion, and they lost their power of universal be- 

Even the tax-gatherers neficence in & large measure by this narrOW view 
do that same. And if & «/ 

ye salute your brethren of the case. The Pharisees had carried the Jew- 
:";",,* ish bi g 0tl 7 to »s last lengths when they added the 
even the Gentiles that corollary, " Thou shalt hate thine enemy." The law 
are^to^e perfect Is na( ^ m ^eed enjoined on the Jew love for the " chil- 
your Father in the heav- dren of his people," but that was an educational 

ens is perfect. P , , . ,, , . , 

preparation for loving and serving all mankind. 

Jesus set forth the wide charity of his philosophy in the distinct 
precept, " Love your enemies." He has been protesting against 
all vindictiveness ; he now blooms out into richest precepts of uni- 
versal fraternity and affection. He is determined not to be mis- 
understood. He embraces public as well as private, national as 
well as personal enemies, the Samaritan and the Roman, the 
ecclesiastical and the political foe. Not simply is a man to regard 
without animosity the foreigner and the alien, he is even to have 
charity for the enemy who stands over him and curses him ; for 
hatred he is to return good, for contempt and persecution he is to 
return benedictions. If the Jews had only understood and acted 
upon this, they might have carried their rule of love to the end 
of the world. The Messiah is to carry his rule to the end of the 
world. Jesus makes good his claim by insisting upon leading his 
people forth to this conquest of love ; and thus, and not as the 
secular Jew expected, became in a high sense the Saviour of the 
world. 

This broad law of benevolence is enforced by an appeal to the 
loftiest example in the universe. G-od is our Father. His chil- 
dren should resemble Him. He causes his sun to rise on men 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



279 



without moral distinctions, and so he sends his rain.* If we 
would be his children, onr love must have that same characteris- 
tic of impartiality. Perhaps by this splendid appeal to God's 
dealings in nature, the Great Teacher meant to imply that the 
same principles prevailed in the moral government, and that as 
sunlight and rain fell on the fields of all, so the grace of God was 
not confined to the Jew but sent equally to the Gentile. It cer- 
tainly does help one to come to a rational view of this lofty 
teaching, when it is recollected that this impartiality in nature is 
not the loss on the part of God of the distinctions of right and 
wrong, nor insensibility to charms of character. It is the law of 
active benevolence which is set forth, the desire to do good to 
another whether he deserve it or not. The love I bear a mean and 
wicked man, who is calumniating and persecuting me, is not to be 
the love I bear my beautiful, true, and good friend, on whom my 
soul safely rests ; for the love God shows men who rebel against 
His holy law is not the same which He feels towards the devoted 
child whose life is spent in learning and doing His will. 

Attracting his hearers by the great example of the heavenly 
Father, he endeavors to break them from their narrowness and 
illiberality by the example of those whom they specially hated 
and despised. The Jew who allowed himself to be a tax-gather- 
er was an unprincipled and mercenary fellow. The Roman gov- 
ernment of the Jewish people was not particularly harsh. It was 
the galling of their pride more than anything else that was offen- 
sive, and that came out specially in the presence of the Roman 
soldiery, and more especially in the oppressive taxation. " Publi- 
can" thence came to designate the most disagreeable kind of a 
" sinner." But, Jesus urges, even publicans love their kith and 
kin, their " nearest," if it be insisted that that is the meaning of 
"neighbor." The Gentiles, whom you hate, will salute their 
brethren. Are the Jews the elect of the Father God % And do 
they in moral character rise no higher than the plane of those 
nations who are not favored by God and are hated by Jews ? If 
the Jews have surpassingly helping privileges, should they not 
have surpassingly elevated characters % 



* Meyer quotes the following- sen- 
tence from Seneca, which is remarkably 
like these words of Jesus : "Si deos 
imitaris, da et ingratis beneficia : nam 
et sceleratis sol oritur, et piratis patent 



maria." "If thou wilt imitate the 
gods, bestow benefits on even the un- 
grateful : for on even criminals the sun 
rises, to even pirates the seas lie open." 



280 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDTE OF JESUS. 

Thus having exhibited the wrong that is in the Pharisaic nar 
rowness and selfishness, showing that in practice it was a mere 
copy of the example of the worst men, while in theory it was an 
injurious perversion of the law, he turned to his disciples and 
said, " You are not to be so. You are to have perfect principles. 
The principles which govern your Father who is in the heavens, 
are those which are to govern you." 

Reaching this transition point in the Discourse, I think it may 
be well to notice that the simple, plain intellects of his congre- 
gation, understanding the words of Jesus in their simplest, plain- 
est meaning, did not see in them the difficulties which all the 
glosses and comments have made for us moderns. It is really 
some task to our intellects to throw out the influence of the per- 
verting interpretations to which we have been accustomed in 
order to place ourselves where the audience of Jesus stood. How 
far I am doing so as I write, I know not ; but I am striving ear- 
nestly to find just what Jesus meant his hearers to understand. 
And an examination so conducted shows that he was not laying 
down maxims of conditct but tests of character. The great- 
trouble many good people, and even many scholarly men, have 
found in the Sermon on the Mount has come from not observing 
this distinction. For example, take the last precept above, " Ye 
are to be perfect, even as your Father in the heavens is perfect." 
The physical and mental limitations of humanity make that ut- 
terly impracticable as a rule of action, but quite practicable as 
an attainment of principle. It is by considering his statements, 
without their limitations, as a directory of conduct, and seeing 
how utterly men fail to reach that standard, that the teachings of 
Jesus come to be regarded as merely a refining ideal, not to be 
realized totally in this life. 

DIRECTIONS FOR THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY. 

We have now reached another division of this discourse, in 
which Jesus shows the corrupting influence of Pharisaism upon 
even the practice of the virtues, and teaches his disciples to purge 
the very spring of their actions. 

Here is the key to this part of the discourse. A man's right- 
eousness works itself out into his public life, and he must often 
do good in the presence of his fellow-men, and there are some 
duties which cannot be discharged in total privacy. " Righteous- 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



2S1 



ness " is exemplified in this discourse by alms-giving, by prayer, 
and by fasting, or more generally by our duties to our brethren, 
to our heavenly Father, and to ourselves. These B ut take heed not to 
duties are to be discharged with reference to God, work y° ur ri s hte(ras - 

° . ness* before men, to 

and not man. when our righteousness is wrought be seen of them ; a 
in the presence of our fellow-beings, we are to otherwise > y° u have 

x ° ' no reward from your 

be very careful that it is not for the purpose of Father who is in the 
being seen by them, to elicit their applause. heavens - 
The verb in the original is very striking, Seadrjvcu, from which 
comes our word " theatre." We are not to theatricize, play a 
part, think the thing well done if they applaud, and ill if they 
give signs of dissatisfaction. 

It is, moreover, to be observed that Jesus does not inculcate 
duties : he merely tells his disciples how they are to be performed. 
He does not say that they shall give alms, and pray, and fast. Lib- 
erality towards our fellows, piety towards our God, and self-con- 
trol, are among the well-known duties of religion everywhere, in 
every form. But the methods of doing these right things mav be 
injuriously wrong, and, among the Pharisees, obviously were ; so 
Jesus sets himself to showing his disciples how they ought to do 
what they already felt it their duty to do. The First Example is 

Alms-giving. 

The word hypocrite is in analogy with the theatricizing just 
spoken of in general terms. A hypocrite strictly Therefore when thou 
is one who maintains a part in a dramatic perf or- makest alms > trumpet 

L n . not before thee, as the 

mance, speaking his words usually from behind a hypocrites do in the 
mask, and hence readily transferred to one who is w ^°^ a an * to the 

^ streets, that they may 

The blowing Of the have glory of men. 
Verily, verily, I say 
nnto you, They exhaust 
their reward. But when 
thou doest alms, let not 
thy left hand know 
what thy right hand 
doeth, that thine alms 
may be in secret, and 



not really what he seems. 

trumpet may be derived from what is affirmed to 

have been the custom of ostentatious alms-givers, 

who summoned the poor by a trumpet, and thus 

made known their gifts. But it is better to take it 

figuratively, as signifying unnecessary display. A 

man's goodness to a fellow-man may be known thy Father Wo seeth in 

-i i • 1 • • -i , i • . t •, r secret shall reward thee. 

and bring him praise, but he is never to do it for 

the purpose of having that praise. If he do, he will not fail, he 

* Not " alms," as in the common ver- I The Vatican and BezaMSS., and, what 



gion. The authentic text is undoubted- 
ly diKaioa-wTjVj righteousness, and not 
ikeri/.ioavi'Tiv, alms, the latter being a 
frell-intentioned but mistaken gloss. 



is still more important, the Codex Sinai- 
ticus give the former. This restored 
reading aids the symmetry of the dis- 
course. 



282 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OP JESUS. 



will be praised. He will have his reward, and his whole reward, 
in that praise. He will thus exhaust his reward. But when he 
gives alms because it is right, and for the good the alms may do 
another, and does it so secretly that, to use a proverbial phrase, 
his left hand does not know what his right hand does, such a 
man has reward from the Father, who does His greatest works in 
secret. Let the deed be done as to Him and not to man. 
The Second Example is 

Prayer. 
Let it be remembered that it is hypocrisy which Jesus attacks, not 
any special outward modes or acts. He does not condemn using 
And when tuou pray- synagogues and streets as prayer places ; he does not 
est, be not as the hypo- condemn standing as a posture.* A man may pray 
Sr standi !n V6 the anywhere, and should pray everywhere. But no 
synagogues and in the matter where he prays, nor how, nor when, — if his 

corners of the broad- ■» -i • i . ,, , ,t . . .. 

ways, that theymay be prayers be made m order to attract the attention 
^en of men. verily, i and elicit the applause of men, he is a hypocrite. 
hlur tG tnX' Reward" He pretends to be speaking to God, when, in real- 
But thou, when thou ity, he is speaking to men. A modern clergyman, 

prayest, enter into thy , , . . ,. , , , , re i , . 

closet, and having lock- kneeling m the church, may be playing off rhetori- 
ed thy door, pray to cal fireworks f or the entertainment of his audience.f 

thy Father who is in , , _ .. . .,. ,. 

secret; and thy Father rather than be assisting them m their supplica- 
whoseeth in secret wm t j 01]s f or t h e mer cy of the Almighty Father. He 

reward thee. But when . -,.... -i r> -r 

ye pray use not sense- is warned by this incisive speech oi J esus. 

less repetitions, as do Jesus does not prohibit much praying, but much 

the heathen ; for they r , . r / &? 

are of opinion that talking ; J not repetitions, but vam y empty repe- 
they shaii be heard for t i t i ons# j esus passed whole nights in prayer, and 

their much speaking. x o x •/ ? 

do not, then, resemble in the agony of Gethsemane he made repetition 
them; for God your of Uq crieg to fa Q heaven i y Father. It was the 

Father knows what J 

things ye need before heathenish custom,§ which had also crept in 
among the Jews, of sometimes unthinkingly re- 



* Indeed, where the general custom 
is to stand, as it was among the Jews, it 
would be ostentatious to kneel ; and if 
Jesus had intended to make a special 
hit at the posture, he would have said 
kneeling. No posture must be taken 
which so attracts attention as to nourish 
one's vanity. 

f As would seem to have been the 
case with that clergyman of whom a 



modern newspaper said, ' ' He delivered 
the finest prayer ever addressed to a 
Boston audience." 

% This distinction is made by Augus- 
tine : " Absit ab oratione multa locutio ; 
sed non desit multa precatio, si fervent 
perseverat intentio." Ep. 130, 10. 

§ A specimen of heathenish vain re 
petitions is given in the Old Testament, 
in 1 Kings xviii. 26. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 283 

peating sound, good words, and at other times filling up the sea- 
son of prayer with the unmeaning repetition of irrelevant and 
senseless things. When a clergyman in church, or a layman in a 
meeting for prayer, sets before Almighty God a tabular statement 
of statistics, or a running commentary on the shortcomings of the 
neighborhood, or a resums of the political movements of the 
times, telling the Great Ruler how wickedly such a senator is 
going to vote if God do not kill him, he is acting heathenishly, 
and Jesus rebukes him in these precepts. 

Again, we guard ourselves against the temptation to the Phari- 
saic vice of literalism in interpreting Jesus. He did not proscribe 
public worship in Iris precepts, and he was strictly observant of it 
in his conduct. But he does teach that culture of character is 
much more important than that of the outward behavior. While 
all display should be avoided in public service', there is a still 
surer mode of spiritual culture, namely, communion with God 
the Father in the profoundest secret, in that place which no one 
but God knows to be used as an oratory, at that time when no 
one but God knows that the suppliant is praying. Such praying 
recognizes the individual personal responsibility of the suppliant, 
for therein he must use the singular personal pronoun when refer- 
ring to himself. He is away from the crowd. He cannot mingle 
his deeds and life with theirs, and thus divide, even in idea, the 
responsibility of his actions. He is alone with God. He acknow- 
ledges the spirituality of true religion. There is no ceremonial, 
even the very simplest, to help him. It is the spirit of the man 
peeking strength from the spirit of the God. He acknowledges 
the spirituality and omnipresence of God. ~No distance separates 
and no darkness hides from the Almighty. While one is praying 
here in this closet, another is in that closet, thousands of miles 
away ; and both are heard. 

It seems to me difficult to overestimate the importance of this 
urgent teaching by Jesus of the intemcdism of true religion as 
antagonizing all the extemalism of cultivated Paganism and 
ecclesiasticized Judaism. It is what a man is, not what lie does, 
that distinguishes him in God's eyes. Being right will produce 
doing right. Internal piety will certainly produce proper external 
worship, but proper external worship does very little towards pro- 
ducing true internal piety. The external is easily assumed. The 
internal is produced with difficulty. Therefore a ceremonial reli- 



284 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

gion is easily popularized. Men are attracted by the showiness, 
and gratified by the pomp. It requires no painstaking of soul 
culture. But it does not endure. It cannot be carried beyond 
the moment of death. What is not inwrought falls off. Charac- 
ter is everything. 

It is surprising that the modern church has gone so far from 
the teaching of Jesus as to lay almost the whole stress upon forms 
and ceremonies; that a "denomination" maybe erected on a mere 
form, and a whole church be convulsed with a controversy about 
mere ceremonials ; that one branch of the church, as is the case 
with the Lutherans in Germany, should have worship disturbed, 
and discord and separations occasioned, on the question whether 
the Lord's Prayer, as it is called, which we shall next consider, 
should be begun Voter unser or Unser Vater, " Our Father " or 
" Father, Ours ! " * If externalism could be banished from all 
religion, nine-tenths of all prejudices, animosities, and persecu- 
tions would cease. 



And then Jesus furnished a form of prayer, which should be a 

model, and show what the spirit and general method of praying 

mi , „_ ' should be. To a critical student of the mind and 

Thus therefore pray 

ye : Our Father, the soul of Jesus there can be no passages in his life 
?Z ' m ,t l Z? e T ns ' more important than those which set forth his 

hallowed be Thy Name, A 

Thy kingdom come, prayers. A man's prayers are the main and most 
Thy win be done, asm liable indices of his real character. The posture 

heaven so on earth. -^ 

Bread necessary for he deliberately assumes before his God is the 

our sustenance give us it, j i i a. _ci • i i j_ i • 

to-day. And forgive noblest and the most graceful possible to him. 
our debts, like as we His uttered pra}^ers reveal him more than his 

also have forgiven our -. . , , . -it mi t , r ,i 

debtors. And lead us didactic deliverances, lne prayers he sets forth 
not into trial, but res- to be used by others are his own highest represen- 
tation of himself. They show what he believes 
God to be, what he believes man to be, and what he believes to be 



* This is stated by my learned friend 
Dr. Schaff in a note to Lange. In Greek 
it is Uarep rifiwu, Pater haymone ; and in 
the Latin, Pater noster. The German 
Lntherans follow that form in Vater 
unser, but the German Reformed insist 
upon Unser Voter. People who write 



quarrelsome books and articles on that 
distinction have no need for either form. 
It does not much matter at all how they 
pray. It would not seem that they 
should care anything for the teaching of 
Jesus who are so utterly unlike him in 
spirit. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 285 

the relation between them. The theological system of Jesus must 
therefore be found chiefly in his prayers. The theology he wished 
to popularize must be what he embodied in the prayer which he 
set forth for all his followers, in all ages of the world. The " ye " 
is emphatic, as the form in the Greek shows and implies that 
between the praying of the heathen, the " ethnic battology," as he 
calls it, and the praying of those who belonged to his spiritual 
family, there was to be a marked difference. 

Brief as this prayer is, it is so pregnant that one scarcely sees 
how in a few paragraphs to set forth its wonderful teachings. 

First of all, in every sense, is the presentation of God the 
Almighty, not as the Creator of the World nor the King of the 
Universe, but as standing to human suppliants in the relation of 
Father. We are not to ask God for anything because he made 
us, or because he rules us, but because we are his children and he 
is our Father. So many myriads of tongues have addressed him 
in this way since the days of Jesus, that we fail to realize what a 
revelation this was. God is never addressed as " Father " in the 
Old Testament.* The relation is alluded to as the ground of re- 
proach for the bad behavior of the people, as in the first chapter 
of Isaiah and the first chapter of Malachi, where God is repre- 
sented, in the first passage, as saying that He had nourished children 
who were rebels, and in the other demanding the service due from 
child to father ; or, as Alford says, " as the last resource of an 
orphan and desolate creature," as in the passage in the sixty-third 
chapter of Isaiah, where, nevertheless, no address is made or peti- 
tion presented on the ground of the fatherhood of God. But now 
Jesus lays it at the foundation of all religion, because the basis of 
all prayer. It is the starting-point of both his theology and his 
philanthropy. The appeal is to be made to the father-heart in 
God. And this shows what all praying really must be. It is not 
the appeal of a slave at the feet of his master, nor a subject at 
the feet of his king. It is not to be an attempt to wring from 
reluctant power a favor which he who prays earnestly desires. It 
is to be such communion with God as sons do have with fathers. 
This abolishes at once that fearful element of most forms of reli- 
gion, in which it is assumed that the interests of God are one 
thing, and those of the suppliant another, and the struggle 

* The learned Bengel well remarks | adduced are either dissimilar or mod- 
that the examples which Lightfoot has I ern. 



%86 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESTJ8. 

between man and his Maker is as to the obtaining and the with- 
holding. Every child's interest is identical with that of the father, 
as the father's is with that of the son. So now, when a man who 
receives the teaching of Jesus goes to his prayers, he begins by 
feeling that he ought to desire simply what God wills, and that 
God wills exactly the thing which is best for his child. That 
makes the communion at once tender and confidential. 

The brief doxological addition to the sublimely simple title, 
" Our Father," is " The One in the heavens." The employment 
of this phrase does two things : it prevents undue familiarity with 
even the Father, who is represented as infinite and glorious, resi- 
dent in all the heavens that are, being wherever anything heavenly 
is, and perhaps intimating that his presence makes what is heav- 
enly ; and it declares his personality, thus separating Jesus from 
all the teachers of pantheism. Prayer is not to be a vague address 
to any indefinite phantasy, but to a " him," to a " one," to a person 
having place and personality, the infinite Progenitor of a countless 
number of sons and daughters, each of whom so derives his or her 
personality from the Great Father, that if he were not a Personal 
Being neither could they be. 

There is another thought suggested by this form of address to 
God. It is to be a perpetual assertion and reassertion of the 
brotherhood of man. It is " our," not " my." I am to acknowl- 
edge that He is as much the Father of every other human being 
who utters this prayer as He is my Father. I am to offer a prayer 
for every other human being when I pray for myself, and if I em- 
ploy this prayer which Jesus sets before me I shall do that very 
thing. Selfishness in prayer is proscribed forever. A man may 
not ask after blessings on his body and on his soul for his own per- 
sonal comfort and own personal salvation alone. When he com 
munes with the Father it must be for the good of the whole fam- 
ily. It lifts the lowly and humbles the proud. An unspotted 
queen on her throne feels that while her royal lips say " Our 
Father," the hunger-parched mouth of the frail and abandoned 
woman, who crouches beside the doorsteps in the dark night, is 
saying the same words to the same Being, with the same truth and 
meaning in them ; and the two women, if they are really praying, 
are praying each for the other. This is the basis and method of 
philanthropy set forth by Jesus. 

After the address the prayer has six petitions, which, it is to be 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



287 



observed, are not doxologies, but real prayers, and as such are to 
signify what are the things which above all others we feel that we 
need, and having which we shall be satisfied that other things may 
come and go as they will. It should interest any student of 
human history to know what are the six things which such a per- 
son as Jesus believed ought to be paramount in the desires of all 
mankind. It will be noticed that three of them relate to God ai d 
three to man. 

The prayers in the first part are, that the Name of the heav- 
enly Father should be hallowed, that his kingdom should come, 
and that his will should be done. There is this phrase added to 
the last of these petitions, "as in heaven so on earth." The hear- 
ers of Jesus must have understood by the word " heaven " the 
special abode of Jehovah, of all holy intelligent spirits that have 
not fallen, and of all the human spirits that have been purified 
and saved. From his making this a model of prayer they must 
have gathered that the state of affairs in that world is the normal, 
and the state of affairs in this world is the abnormal condition 
of the universe, and that to have this world brought to the condi- 
tion of that world should be the highest desire and the most irre- 
pressible longing of every true heart. It is the first outburst of 
the soul. The phrase "as in heaven so on earth" is not therefore 
to be confined to the last of these three petitions, but is to cover 
them all.* "As in heaven so on earth be thy name hallowed ; " 
" as in heaven so in earth thy kingdom come ; " " as in heaven so 
on earth thy will be done." 

The foundation of all true religion in the heart of ma a must 
be found in its pure ideas of God. Men cannot add to His holi- 
ness, but their own conceptions of His character may become very 
exalted. Errors in religion arise from false ideas of God, in re- 
garding Him as vengeful, or weakly lenient, or indifferent, or in 
some way other than what He really is. In heaven the souls of 
the holy have only holy, that is, true thoughts and conceptions of 
Him. Each soul is like a perfect mirror. The souls of men are 



* This is the view of the Council of 
'Trent, as set forth in the Catechism. I 
am aware that the Codices which omit 
the petition, " Thy will be done," in the 
corresponding passage in Luke xi. 2, 
omit also these words, " as in heaven so 



in earth;" nevertheless the spirit of the 
prayer, and its peculiar construction, by 
which so much condensation is obtained, 
seem to me to justify the interpretation 
given in the Roman Catholic Catechism. 



288 SECOND AND THERD PASSOVER ES" THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

full of flaws. God's name means God's character, that by which 
He should he called or described. As in heaven the purest, truest 
thoughts of God are held, so ought it to be desired that upon earth 
all men shall " sanctify the Lord their God in their hearts." 

And the acknowledgment of his kingdom by all men, and their 
total submission to his beneficent reign, so that there should be 
no rebellion against the benign sovereignty of the Father-King, is 
to be the aspiration and desire of all who pray. There is a sense 
in which that kingdom does always as much prevail on earth as in 
heaven, namely, in the actual rule of God over all things ; but in 
heaven all intelligences comprehend this, accept it, and rejoice in 
it ; on earth men do not submit, do not willingly and gladly ac- 
cept it, but are striving to reach their happiness in their own ways, 
and not by being willing subjects of their Father, who is their 
Lord. Each man that prays should desire that that kingdom be 
set up wholly in his own soul, and that he should always be free 
from all other paramount rulers.* 

The third petition prays that on earth the will of God may be 
done as it is in heaven. It is to be observed how the personality 
of God is preserved throughout, and humanity as distinct from 
God. So that prayer is not the mere human addressing itself or 
voiding its deepest feelings on the unfeeling universe. Man is as 
autocratic in his sphere as God is in his. God may do the will 
of man, or man may do the will of God, or their wills may be 
made to clash. If the last do not take place one of the former 
must. Which does the good governance of the universe in gen- 
eral, and the good of both parties in particular, demand ? Shall 
the Infinite be obedient to the finite, the power of the Omnipo- 
tent Immaculate be made subservient to the caprices of the will 
of sinful Feebleness ? If the latter were the case, then, for a 
moment, we might have peace. But the submission of Omnipo- 
tence to a mind that may at any moment make a mistake, and to 
passions that every moment are rushing on blindly, would be a 
ruinous anomaly. There is no way in which peace and progress 
and happiness can be secured but by the direct bending of all the 
energies of man to the will of God. And thus is man to be 
ennobled. He loses no freedom of his will, he is not absorbed in 
God, he is not doing compulsory work, but he is freely choosing 

* So Augustine says: "TJt in nobis | optamus." Serm. 56. 
Teniat, optamus ; ut in illo inveniamur, 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 289 

to direct all his great energies to the accomplishment of the good 
designs of the tenderest and lovingest Father in all the universe. 
In the case of man it would be many fitful wills attempting to 
rule ; in the case of God, it is One will, the will of the infinitely 
wise and good Father. 

And thus, by a natural and logical transition, from petitions 
touching the estate of God the suppliant is taught to pass to peti- 
tions touching his own estate. 

The first prayer is for subsistence : " bread proper for our suste- 
nance give us to-day." The epithet which precedes "bread" 
occurs in the New Testament only in this passage and in Luke xi. 
3. It is one of the most disputed words in all these writings. In 
Greek it is liriovalav. In the common English version it is trans- 
lated " daily." The Vulgate has " panem nostrum superstantia- 
lem," which is followed by the Rhenish version, " our superstan- 
tial bread." In the Arabic and Ethiopian versions it is "to- 
morrow's bread," * which does not accord with the desire that it 
may be given to-day. I have endeavored in the translation given 
above to render what seemed to me to embrace all the possible 
and practicable meanings of the word as used by Jesus. f The 
prayer is for the preservation of the whole man. What is need- 
ful for his body is bread, and therefore aprov is used. And that 
symbolizes what is necessary for his intellect and for his soul. 
What is now necessary to sustain us as men is to be prayed for, 
and nothing more. No anxious care for the morrow is allowed, 
for if our prayer be answered to-day the same prayer will be an- 
swered to-morrow. No luxuries are to be craved. Life, in which 
to do the Father's will, this is all the child is to seek. What I 
may use now for physical, mental, and spiritual sustenance and 
strength, I may ask of God. But bread, real bread for the body, 
]*3 the thing set forth in this petition explicitly, and all other needed 
things implicitly. 

The second thing to be asked is forgiveness. Sin is represented 
under the figure of debt. To be in debt oppresses a sensitive 
mind as with a load of guilt. There can be no security, no 
peace, no happy action of the powers while a man lives in the 



* And in the ' ' Gospel according- to the 
Hebrews," Jerome says that he found 
for iirtovffiav the word "into? that is, "to- 
morrow's. " 

19 



f Those who desire to see all the mean- 
ings assigned may consult Alf ord's Greek 
Testament, Lange's Comment., and Ben- 
gel's Gnomon, in loco. 



290 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

consciousness of having committed sins which are not forgiven 
him. Every true man longs for that. Whatever pleasure he may 
have found in sinning, the moment the heat of lust or passion 
subsides the sense of the offence against his heavenly Father 
overpowers him. He can do no more, he can enjoy no more, 
until the sin be forgiven. It has become the extreme necessity of 
his life. The pain of guilt is the one intolerable agony. 

And here the communion element of the Prayer is made to ap- 
pear again distinctly. The petitioner prays that all sins, his owr 
and those of others, may be forgiven. And that there may be a 
general amnesty, he first forgives all who have sinned against him, 
all who have gotten in debt to him by their failure to do for him 
what they were bound as human brothers to do. Then he goes 
to the heavenly Father and prays that the same may be done for 
him. " Forgive us our debts like as we also have forgiven our 
debtors." It does not place the plea of forgiveness on the ground 
that we have forgiven our debtors, those who have sinned against 
us ; nor does it make the forgiveness we grant to others the meas- 
ure of the Father's forgiveness of us : " Forgive us as much as we 
have forgiven others ; " but rather means that what we have done 
towards them He should do towards us, referring to the nature of 
the act of forgiveness rather than to the degrees of its exercise. 

The last prayer is for redemption. Trials of faith, tests of 
character, discipline that strengthens, these are what no man has 
need of dreading. But that the providences of the heavenly 
Father may not lead us into such positions as shall make the 
solicitation to evil on the part of others specially influential over 
our lives and conduct, we may request. Being forgiven, we have 
a horror of the same circumstances as those in which we fell. 
This petition seeks to put the suppliant under the special provi- 
dence of the Father in all coming life. And then, as a climax, 
it exhibits the consummation of the Christian life. " Rescue us 
from evil ! " When that prayer is answered, there is nothing 
more to pray for : it is the completeness of redemption from all 
physical, intellectual, and spiritual evil, — from disease, from 
error, and from sin. It indulges the vision of perfection, and 
ardently longs that in the suppliant it may have complete realiza- 
tion. And what he asks for himself he solicits for all others who 
pray. It is a prayer for the destruction of all evil. 

Every fresh analysis of this Prayer lets us more and more into 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 291 

the mird of Jesus. It is to be noticed that each petitioner is in- 
structed by his very prayer to regard the glory of God as the first 
thing, and the supply of his own wants as quite secondary. A 
man who rushes to his heavenly Father with requests for his own 
deliverance and enlargement, not feeling more concern ed that 
God may be adored than that he may be helped, is a selfish and 
undevout worshipper. The rule is : Worship first and help after- 
ward. Again, there seems to be this connection implied, that the 
petitioner desires sustenance, forgiveness, and deliverance from 
evil, that he may be able to contribute towards rendering the 
name of the Father holy in the hearts of all men, and bringing 
all men to submit to his kingship and devote themselves to carry- 
ing out his will. Nor must the practical effect of the sincere 
offering of this prayer upon the character of the petitioner 
escape our attention. A man should pray only for what he 
really, truly, and earnestly desires. If he do not desire what he 
asks, he adds to deceit a dreadful mockery of the omnipotent 
and loving Father. This prayer indicates whal he should desire, 
the proper adoration of God, the complete acknowledgment as 
well as continuance of his rule in the universe, and the beautiful 
harmony and beneficent progress which shall follow the adjust- 
ment of man's moral energies to the decisions of the will of God : 
and in order that these things may be accomplished, for himself 
the petitioner desires only sustenance, forgiveness, and safety. 
What then must life be ? Simply the devotion of man's powers 
to gain these things. A life so ordered would necessarily become 
not only satisfactory but sublime. The petitioner would no longer 
be seeking the things that were degrading or even unnecessary. 
He would never idle. He would strive to obtain proper food for 
his body, proper culture of his intellect, proper growth of his 
soul, that he might be able to do more to carry forward God's 
great design of making the universe the domain of a rule which 
should develop it into a boundless estate of inconceivable glory. 
Petty cares would lose their hold upon such a man ; but nothing 
would be neglected. In the most trivial matters he would be 
just and faithful. For every possible emergency he would be 
ready. The poets have not dreamed of a man surpassing him 
who should labor to have this prayer fulfilled in all equipoise of 
passions and intellect, in all completeness of self-government and 
energy of action. He would come into a grandeur and a beauty 



292 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEK IN THE UFE OF JESUS. 

which would justify humanity in its claim of being offspring ol 
Deity. Can the parallel of this Prayer be found elsewhere in 
literature ? 

FORGIVENESS. 

The Teacher steps back a moment to enforce the duty of for- 
giveness as a necessary precedent of prayer. The word is changed 
For if ye forgive men f rom that which signifies a debt to that which 
their blunders, your signifies a slip, a fall, a defeat, a blunder. In the 

heavenly Father will & . T 

also forgive you ; but if translation I have chosen the last, as perhaps com- 
ye forgive not men, paging j n some sen se all the others. The lesson 

neither will your Fa- - 1 - ° 

ther forgive your biun- plainly is, that whatever other preparation a man 
may have for prayer, if he have not forgiven 
others his petitions will be inefficient. It is utterly useless to go to 
God for forgiveness if I have not forgiven all others, considering 
their sins against me as defeats in a conflict which I must charita- 
bly suppose they waged with the temptations to do wrong ; for 
that is the view which God charitably takes of my wrong actions. 
I owe him service. It is a debt. I fail to pay. Praying for for- 
giveness shows that I acknowledge the debt and have tried to pay, 
but failed, and was defeated. This blundering life He forgives, 
but not until I have forgiven those who thus stand related to me. 
The English version of Matthew has a doxology at the close of 
the petitions, a very simple and very noble doxology. But as in 
a history of Jesus we can consider only his well-ascertained words, 
this addition must be rejected. Its absence from the Sinaitic, the 
Vatican, and the Beza Codices ought to settle the question that, 
however excellent it may be, it was not a part of the prayer which 
Jesus delivered to his disciples for their use, and to be the model 
of all prayer used by his followers in all times. To the absence 1 
from the oldest Greek manuscript versions must be added the 
fact that the earliest Christian authors failed to comment on it. 
If we found in dissertations upon what is called Oratio Dominica, 
" The Lord's Prayer," the doxology expounded as part of the 
prayer, that fact would create a violent assumption that it existed 
in manuscripts older than any which have survived, older than 
the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates back to the fourth century. 
Or, if we had relied upon the Codex Vaticahus, which up to the 
discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus was our oldest, and then upon the 
discovery of this latter had found that it contained the doxology, 



THE SEEMON ON THE MOUNT. 



293 



it would have strengthened the conviction that it existed in the 
very first records made of the words of Jesus. But when none 
of these versions have it, and all the Latin Fathers fail to make 
mention of it, when expressly explaining the prayer, sound criti- 
cism compels ns to reject it. 

The question naturally occurs to a thoughtful reader, How, then, 
did it appear in the text of Matthew 1 It is manifestly liturgical. 
When liturgies sprang up in the Church it was added,* and then, 
when copies of the Gospels were made, it was easily transferred 
from the liturgy by the memory and habit of the copyist into the 
margin or directly into the text. Ambrose,! who was born in the 
middle of the fourth century, implies that the doxology was re- 
cited by the priest alone, after the people had recited " The 
Lord's Prayer." It is quite easy to see how this Epiphonema, as 
Ambrose calls it, should have come into the text. But the proof 
thus far is all against its being part of the original prayer. 

The Third Example is 



And when ye fast, be- 
come not as the hyp- 
ocrites, gloomy-faced ; 
for they darken their 
faces that they may be 
seen of men to be fast- 
ing. For verily I say 



FASTING. 

The teaching here is quite plain. Hypocrites — men playing a 
part for the purpose of securing the applause of men — make all 
of the part they can, look sad and worn, that men 
may praise their saintliness. And men do. They 
have their reward, and they exhaust it. They 
have none of that inner culture which comes of 
real self-denial, of abstinence from the usual en- 
joyments of life because the soul is afflicted with unto you, They exhaust 

-, j, ., n . n ^ , X /. their reward. But 

a pam by reason or. its departures trom (rod. lr a thou, fasting, anoint 
man choose such a culture and its great reward, he thy head and wash th y 

. • . i face, that thou be not 

must not put on the appearance or samtlmess. seen by men to be fast- 
Let him fast, if he find spiritual profit therein, ^ g , but to thy Father 
but let him last inwardly, making his usual toilet, thy Father who is in 
permitting no negligence to creep into his dress, 8ecret wiU reward thee " 
giving no sign to the world of that inward spiritual discipline 
which he is enduring. The modern Christian who makes all 
about him aware that it is Friday by his glumness or sanctimony 
is a Pharisee. The cultivation of character, not the flaunting of 



* It appears in its first form in Const. 
Apos., vii. 24, &ri <tov icrriv i) fiacnKeia ds 
aiwvar Ap.7}i>. " For thine is the king- 



dom through the aeons. Amen." 
f De Sacrament. , vi. 5. 



294 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDTE OF JESUS. 

the insignia of religious ceremonial, is the great work Jesus set 
before his disciples. 

WARNINGS AGAINST COVETOTJSNE8S. 

Whenever the connection in this discourse seems to be broken, 

the clue is easily found by recollecting that the text is Character. 

The Teacher is insisting upon a man's being right 

Treasure not up for . 

yourselves treasures up- and strong and beautiful in his soul : that a man's 
on earth where moth g reatness a oes not consist in his circumstances 

and rust disfigure, and ° 

where thieves break but in his internal character : that a man may 

*:"?" h *ve only one imperishable and inalienable 

eeives treasure in hea- treasure, namely, himself — his character. Other 

rthl^dlsfi^ things go. This stays. Other things are earthly ; 

and where thieves do this is heavenly. 

not break through and -» r .. • j i • j i , t 

steal. For where is thy Moreover, a connection appears m this, that Je- 
treasure there is also S11S was setting a transparent character in con- 
trast with hypocrisy. The Pharisees were worldly- 
minded to the core, while all their external appearance was reli- 
gious. They were blowing trumpets before their alms, in the 
graphic description of Jesus, were making long prayers in market- 
places while devouring the substance of widows, and fasting osten- 
tatiously while heaping up treasures on earth. Having set forth 
the manner in which the prominent duties of religion ought to 
be discharged, the Teacher inculcates the entire consecration of 
the life, in the heart and soul of a man. It is to be marked how 
he adheres to one theme. It is not because all earthly possessions 
are liable to destruction from the wear and tear of time, or the 
force or fraud of men, nor for the safety of the possessions, that 
Jesus insists that all things shall be contrived into an investment 
in spiritual and eternal things, but for the effect upon the charac- 
ter, for the heart's sake ; for " where is thy treasure there is also 
thy heart ; " and for everlasting dignity and happiness the imper 
ishable affections must be fixed on imperishable things. 

AGAINST DOUBLE-MINDEDNESS. 

That his disciples might learn the importance of preserving 
clear-sightedness in spiritual things, he brings an illustration from 
ft bodily member, and this he does not scientifically, but, as 
always in such cases, popularly, as the people understood it. 
Sight is simple. A healthy eye is needed. An eye that sees 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



29a 



double is an evil eye, and utterly confusing. So, when the soul's 
eye begins to nicker, becoming uncontrollable, seeing double, 
commingling and confusing objects, it is a bad The lamp of the body 
time for the man who depends upon it. His light is the eye : M thine eye 

° be clear, thy whole 

is darkness — the greatest darkness — worse than body shaii be bright: 
total blindness, to which a man may adapt him- but a thine eye be bad ' 

} m . . thy whole body shall be 

self. It is uncertain, unreliable, yet inducing the dark, if then the 
man to rely upon it because it seems to be right. bgbt tbat *! in tbee f 

«/ . JT o be darkness, how great 

If the light be darkness, how great the darkness ! the darkness 1 

Jesus continues to dissuade his disciples from the double-mind- 
edness of the Pharisees by a second illustration, taken from social 
life. The word employed in Greek can be trans- 

,,,,„,,, , , -, No man can be slave 

iated only by " slave, one who belongs to an- to two masters; for 
other. A hired servant may in some sense serve eitber he wiU bate ona 

v ■ t and love the other, or 

two men equally well, but a slave is a member of he win ciing to the 
a family. As a son cannot be son of two parents *™* an * rtespis ° 

J r the latter. Ye cannot 

at once, so a servant that belongs to a master is be slaves to God and 
devoted to his master utterly. His only comfort Mammon - 
is in undivided affection and service. So as to the claims of God 
and Mammon. You cannot serve both at the same time. The 
Pharisees have tried it and failed. They are kept from the full 
enjoyment of their gains by their religious pretences ; they lose 
the pleasure of undivided religious service by their base worldli- 
ness. A man must be single-hearted to be good, and great, 
and happy. Mammon seems merely to be a Chaldee word for 
" riches." There is no evidence that the Syrians, as has been as- 
serted, ever worshipped a god of that name. 



AGAINST EXCESSIVE ANXIETY. 



In this passage the Teacher enlarges the idea of single-mind- 
edness in a direction which excludes distracting care. He has 
been speaking of clear-sightedness : he now speaks of directness 



of 



A man's full powers are needed for each day's living. 



* In the common version it stands, 
*' either he will hate the one and love 
the other, or else he will hold to the one 
and despise the other," the latter clause 
being merely a repetition of the former. 
But this certainly is not the meaning. 
Meyer expresses it : " He will either 
hate A and love B, or cling to A and de- 



spise B," which is certainly the sense, 
and such I have given it by using 
"former" and "latter" so that in 
both members of the sense the 6 eu 
shall refer to one person, and 6 irepos 
shall refer to another. Dean Alford 
sanctions this translation. 



296 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



He cannot afford to have his forces scattered. Double-minded' 

ness does this. Loving God and hating Mammon, hating God 

on this account i say and loving Mammon, in perpetual alternation, is 

Unto vou, Be not exces- . -■ • r i L c\ i -i 

eiveiy anxious for your tne rum oi character, bo he proceeds very ear- 
inner man,* what ye nestly and eloquently to strip his disciples of the 

are to eat, nor for your .. _cn i i . it 

outer man, what ye are encumbrance o± all worldly cares, that they may 
to wear, is not the g[ xe themselves to the loftiest self -culture. 

soul more than food -pv -, , . T 

and the body than remaps almost no teaching 01 Jesus has been 
clothing? Look upon so variously understood and so wretchedly misin- 

the birds of the air, i • 

terpreted as this particular passage. It is quite 
necessary that we do it the justice to apply a lit- 
tle common sense to its interpretation. 

It certainly does not teach idleness, sloth, list- 
difference lessness, neglect of ordinary affairs, or any volun- 
tary impoverishment. It does not teach starvation 
and nakedness. It does not encourage the fanati- 
cism of sitting down and " letting the Lord take 
cubit ? t And about care of " a man. It teaches precisely the opposite 
ttrTrSiousf consid! of a11 tnese things. It teaches that a man is to 

er the lilies of the field 
how they grow : they 
neither toil nor spin: 



for they sow not, nor 
reap, nor gather into 
storehouses, and your 
heavenly Father feed- 
eth them. Do you not 
differ from them, and 
is not the 
much in your favor ? t 
But who of you by be- 
ing excessively anxious 
has the power to add 
to his life one single 



employ all his faculties and time in doing what 
his place in the kingdom of God plainly demands 
and i say unto you That f }^ m an( j satisfying whatever righteous claim 

not even Solomon in all ' , . ° . . , 

his giory was arrayed any one has upon him. On principle, and as the 
like one of these. pr i nc i pa i tiling-, the kingdom of God is to be 

Wherefore, if God thus r r ° ' & . 

clothe the grass of the sought, the rule of the law of God m the life, 



* The word may be translated ' ' life " 
or "soul." The soul's continuance in 
the body does depend upon food, and 
yet it seems somewhat harsh to translate 
the word by k ' soul " in this case, and 
bring it so abruptly close to food. As 
the outer man is in the connection 
named <ra>,ua, so the inner man is named 

f This is a circumlocution, and yet I 
have not learned how to convey the 
sense of the original in closer English. 
The Greek is oi>x v/xeis uaWov Siacpepere 
avruu. The common version, ' ' Are ye 
not much better than they ? " conveys 
only part of the meaning. In the ver- 
sion above I think I have given the 
whole meaning. 



\ A cubit is two spans. In the com- 
mon version the translation is ' ' stat- 
ure." The word signifies either " age " 
or " height." The objection to the lat- 
ter is that Jesus is showing that they 
cannot do the least thing, and therefore 
it is useless to be anxious about the 
greatest ; but to add eighteen inches to 
any man's height were a very great 
thing, hence it is inappropriate here. 
Moreover, Jesus is talking of the life, 
and hence " age " is appropriate. Th< 
objection to this rendering is that span 
is a measure of space and not of time. 
In reply, life is often represented as a 
journey, and we have the common 
phrase, u length of life." SeeEs. xxxix. 
5. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 297 



the knowledge of that law, and perfect and ioyful field ' which ^-^ * 

. m , , •!• and to-nioiTOw is cast 

submission to it. I hat surely and necessarily m- into the oven, win he 
eludes the discharge of all duties towards God, not much more you < ^ 

& t 'of little faith ? 

towards our fellows, and towards ourselves. No Therefore do not be 
grander life than that has yet been conceived. over - an ™ s i ^y^ 

j? J m What shall we eat ? at 

But the drawback of most men is that they are whatshaiiwe drink? 
double, that they use their vision wanderingly, o^vhatshaiiwewear? 

» «/ o J ? For all these things 

looking upon spiritual things and temporal things the Pagans seek, foi 
as different and conflicting, and both desirable, ™*?££ZZ 
seeing much good in God and much good in of aii these things. 
Mammon ; and so remaining undecided, or mat- ™ s aom and^righ* 
ing slight efforts. Jesus teaches a concentration eousness, and an these 

/. 77 .7 ,7 . , /» ,7 . things shall be added 

oj aii trie powers on trie pursuits oj trie most ^ you# Tnere fore, 
precious thing, leaving the results to the heavenly do not be anxious about 
Father, and pledging the effectual co-operation row ^ n h ' ave its owu " 
of the heavenly Father to secure success. anxiety, sufficient for 

mi , . r. T . , , , the day is its own trou- 

lne teaching oi Jesus was intended to enable ble . 
men to attend better to their rightful business 
by relieving them of all carking and weakening cares. He con- 
trasts the man with his circumstances, his soul and body with 
his food and clothing. Did God make men and women merely 
that they might eat and dress ? If so, then you cannot be too 
careful for these things, and they should be chiefly sought. The 
body and soul were made for the garments and meats, in such a 
case. But if the food and raiment are merely to keep the body 
and soul together for the purpose of having a character wrought 
out, then, while that important process is being faithfully carried 
forward, the Almighty Father knows what his child needs and 
will not fail to furnish the supplies. 

The force and beauty of the two illustrations are worth some 
study. In them is contained an argument a fortiori : if God 
will do all this for birds and flowers, what may He not rationally 
be expected to do for His rational, sensitive children % Look first 
at the birds. They are merely birds ; they have no residence, they 
are " of the air," apparently thriftless but cheerful little vaga- 
bonds, holding no real estate, engaging in no agricultural or com- 
mercial pursuits, simply following their instincts, doing what God 
put them into the world to do. Inconsiderable as they seem, if 
God chose to create them He feels Himself charged to maintain 
them, and He does feed them. He is not their Father, He if 



298 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



merely their Creator. But He is " your Father." Are you not 
more worth preserving than they ? Does not your Father discrim 
inate between His creatures and His children ? 

But what good comes of over-care? Has it ever increased 
your sagacity or your ability ? Has it ever added to your life so 
much as two spans ? Did any profit ever come to any man from 
excessive anxiety ? And as for clothing, its want of loftiest value 
is seen in the fact that God bestows it not on men, not on women, 



not on 



:ings and 



queens, but on the unconscious flowers. They 
have no intelligence and no address, and so God gives them dress 
as a special attractiveness; but withholds it from men and women, 
who have eyes and mouths for luminous and vocal expression, 
and so having this great capability of address they do not need that 
which is such pomp and glory to the flowers. If they desire it 
they cannot have it. Solomon, when gold and silver and precious 
stones, and ivory and all wealth poured in upon him, and when he 
exerted his ingenuity and employed his extensive commercial 
connections to render his person and his throne glorious, would 
in his summer walks, see himself out-splendored by the " crown- 
imperial " that grew upon his*|)athway, or all his magnificence 
eclipsed by the golden liliaceous flowers with which the " amaryl- 
lis " enriched the autumnal fields about his royal city ; * and he 
knew that he could never sit under canopy made by art which 
should equal the velvety softness of that gorgeous " lily of the 
valleys " which, with the rose of Sharon, he has immortalized in 
his " Song of Songs." \ Man's is a nobler glory than the glory 
of garments. He differs from birds and lilies, while he gathers 
lessons from them. He need not take these as exemplars: he is 
not only something different but something much better. And 
will not his heavenly Father care for him % The birds are of the 
air, the lilies are of the field, not cared for by man, are common 
property. Man is of the heavens. Field and air, lily and bird, 
will all pass away. Man and heaven will remain. Pagans find 
their greatest delight and glory in caring for their bodies. The 
followers of Jesus are to make their greatest work the culture of 
their souls. And then, so far from being sure to starve, and finding 



* The "crown-imperial" (fritillaria 
imperialis) grows wild in Palestine, and 
the amaryllis lutea, according to Sir J. 
E. Smith, covers the fields in the Levant. 



f See Song ii. 1, 2, 16. This was 
undoubtedly the H&leh lily, which Mr. 
Thomson so enthusiastically praises in 
The Land and the Booh, vol. i p. 394. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 

the service of the king a failure and an impoverishment, Jesus 
pledges the heavenly Father to supply everything needful. A man 
may seek " all these things " and fail to find them ; but he that seeks, 
on principle, as the principal thing, the establishment of God's king- 
dom and the reign of the right, shall always have shelter and nour- 
ishment. These are the shell in which the kernel of character is 
to grow. 

AGAINST HARSH JUDGMENTS. 

By a natural transition of discourse, Jesus passed from the 
judgments we should pronounce upon ourselves to those we pro- 
nounce upon others. 

These words certainly cannot be reasonably taken to mean that 
we are to suspend the exercise of that admirable faculty with 
which God has endowed us, by which we com- Do not judge harsh . 
pare conduct and character with his own great iy, that you be not 
standard of morality. There are few more im- j£^ h i n ^J£ 
proving exercises than this, for the quickening of y e i ud ^ y e sna11 be 

n ., .*-,«. t,i • t c judged, and with what 

our own moral sensibility and the guidance of measure ye measure, ye 
our own lives. The Great Teacher condemns the sha11 be measured. And 

,, ..,.,,.-, . .. why dost thou observe 

unlovely spirit with which many are wont to criti- the sp imter that is in 
cise the conduct of their fellows, to make the th ? brother,s eye, and 

_ 1 . . „ in . . dost not perceive the 

most unfavorable judgments 01 all their actions, beam that is in thine 
and to assign to bad motives actions that may iust own eye? 0r how 

° J J dost thou say to thy 

as well be supposed to have sprung from motives brother, "Brother, let 
that are pure and noble. To "-judge" here me pnl1 the splinter 

1 . from thine eye,' 1 and 

means neither the passing of just or of unjust behold a beam is in 
judgment, but the spirit with which this is done. ^^^rLfThe 
Men ought to be careful not to form judgments beam from thine own 
unnecessarily, nor carelessly, nor hastily. When ^Sl* to^^e 
duty and observance of the requirements of jus- splinter from thy broth- 
tice demand, then we may pass judgment. But 
even then not hastily and not harshly. The reason assigned is that 
we shall be judged with the judgment which we apply to others. 

God is judge. To judge one's fellow-men is to assume his 
prerogative. Our judgments will be reviewed by the Searcher of 
all hearts. The Great Teacher does not mean that if we are 
lenient to the faults of others God will therefore be lenient to ns 
— that if we lose the distinction of right and wrong towards our 
fellow-men, God will therefore obliterate that grand distinction 
in His own mind. But he does mean that our judgments of 



300 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



others are to be the materials upon which man may, and God will, 
make up judgment in our own cases ; not that the only test of our 
characters will be the judgment we have of the character of others, 
but that it will be one of the surest of such tests. Our decisions 
are not final. They do not touch our fellow -men as that from 
which there is no appeal; but if they have been unjust and unne- 
cessarily severe they come back in condemnation on our own souls. 

And still there is this other reason : Severity of judgment has 
a tendency to make such judges hypocrites. 

A man will pretend to have kind motives, whereas no man who 
utters an unnecessarily severe judgment of his fellow-man can 
feel kindly towards him. The most ruinous things are said in 
society in the softest tones and surrounded by phrases of great com- 
passion. But it is all a pretence. " Poor fellow ! " "I am sorry 
it is so ! " But you do not pity him, and do not know that it is so. 
J bsiis presents a satirical picture of such a man. He describes 
h .m as going to a brother who has a splinter in his eye, and say- 
ii g tenderly, " Let me : I'll pull out the mote out of thine eye." 
B ut he is a hypocrite. There is a rafter in his own eye. He is 
f tolish. How can he with a log of wood in his own eye see how 
to perforin the surgical operation of extracting the splinter from his 
brother's eye ? And this shows the uselessness of all such judgments. 
If charity begins at home, so should judgment. Wash your own 
hands before you point out the soiled hands of your fellows. 

The Teacher guards against the opposite extreme of laxity. 

While we are to be careful not to pronounce any harsh judgment 

upon any man, we are to discriminate among men, 

Do not give the holy ^ J ' . . f . ' 

thing to dogs, nor cast or else we snail always be blundering m dealing 
your pearls before w ^ tnem# There are distinctions iii character. 

swine, lest they tram- 
ple them in their feet, Some men are like dogs for ferocious oppugnance 

andtorningmighttear ^ ^ ^^ ^^ ^ gwine f Qr fa^ i mpur j ty> 

To give them sacred and precious things were a sad 
mistake. In the East, the dog and the hog are the most despised 
of animals. Jesus, by this strong language, taught that absolute 
abandonment of moral distinction is a mental vice which stands 
over against uncharitable judgments. 



* Dickinson's translation is, " Give 
not that which is consecrated to the 
dogs, lest they turn and tear you ; nor 
cast your pearls before swine, lest they 



trample them under their feet," which 
probably is the sense, but the transla- 
tion given above follows the order of th« 
original text. 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 301 



AGAINST DOUBTING GOD. 

The connection seems to be this : He had urged freedom from 
excessive carefulness as necessary to dignity and strength of char- 
acter. That men may be free from earking care 

he directs them to go to their heavenly Father in Ask ' and ifc s * aU ** 

o «/ given you ; seek, and 

prayer, and gives the assurance that every truly ye shaii find; knock. 

persevering soul shall have success. He lays ^.Tol^ 

down as a universal proposition, that every true who asks receives, and 

t -v-m . who seeks finds, and to 

prayer is answered. When any man comes to him that knockB it 

God and sincerely prays that his sins may be 6haU be opened, or 

r . , t i , -i , • i what man is there ol 

forgiven, he may go away absolutely certain and yoUi whom his son ask . 



sure that his prayer has been answered, and that ed for b re ad? he wni 

... „ at i i not give him a stone I 

his sins are forgiven. And so whatever the pe- or eV en asks for a fish t 
titioner needs God gives in answer to his prayer. he wiu not give him a 

s-, t, . P t i • j i . . serpent! If you, being 

God s gifts are good, and suited to the recipient. ev ii, know to give good 
ff a human father adapts his gifts to his child, giftsto your children - 

iiii! i by n ow much mora 

not ottering a stone when he should present bread, 8 haii your Father in the 
much more the good Father in the heavens, lifted heavens give good 

° . . things to them that 

above all human infirmities, will give to all His ask him i ah things, 
children, if not what they ask, certainly what they th « efore > that y° a 

7 J 7 J J wish men to do to you, 

need. His gifts would not be good if not adapted the same also do ye to 
to his children. J hem - /° r this J * he 

law and the prophets. 

There seems also this connection with what im- 
mediately precedes. You know what you would have your heav- 
enly Father do to your fellow-men. Do so to them, not judging 
harshly, not giving inappropriately. What you would have God 
do to you, that do to your neighbor ; for manifestly that is what 
you desire your neighbor to do to you. Our petitions to God are 
the expressions of our highest and best self-love. 

Thus this Teacher has shown that he taught nothing which was 
to invalidate the law and the prophets, but much that was to ful- 
fil them, and that the demands of the moral law are not met by a 
rigorous observance of the outward letter, but by the building up 
of a character in accordance with the spirit of the law. 

AGAINST THE BROAD WAY. 

As compared with an earnest culture of the character, the mere 
Pharisaic observance of outward Pharisaic rites is quite an easy 
thing. It is the broad road. The other is the narrow. It is not 



302 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



you in sheep's clothing, , 

but from within they *or base purposes. 



of itself so difficult a thing that men may abandon the attempt to 

enter it. The fewness of those who do enter is not due so much 

Enter through the to its difficulty, wliich is admitted, as to the fact 

r~™ that so man J are dra ™ away into the broader 
roa<i leading away into road. But that the narrow way rather than the 

1"-"J s P aeions road sWd be S0 "SKis urged, and a 
through it, because nar- powerful reason suggested by the very verb that 

ISd* e tSroad d thTt is nsed > "^ads away? one to destruction and the 
leads away into life, other to life, intimating that both roads are very 

and few are they who i t . -, i -, . , 

find it . l011 g? and carry the travellers thereon into scenes 

far removed from this present state of affairs, and 
therefore the choice of roads should be made with great care. 

The difficulties of cultivating character are enhanced by teach- 
ers of falsehood, who assume such manners of sanctity that they 
Beware of false pro- ma J deceive. " From within " such men are ra- 
phets, who come to pacious, and use even the office of teaching morals 

Jesus shows how constantly 
he keeps his great theme in view by his very 
them, do mode of describing false teachers, not by saying 
persons gather grapes what th fo ^ ut j^y describing what they are. 

from thorns, or figs *> J » ■ «/ 

from thistles? Thus Their actions spring from an inmost nature which 
is wolfish and selfish. And the same thing is set 
forth in his illustration drawn from trees and 
their fruit. The man who is not really good is 
like a tree which may be laden with artificial 
fruit, while it is absolutely unproductive or is ca- 

shouid produce beauti- p ame f producing only evil fruits. A man need 

fid fruits. Every tree - -i • i n to* r i • i • *»' i 

that does not produce have little Care for the fruitage 01 his hie, but 

beautiful fruit is hewn mugt ^q mQgt care f u l f or the Sap of lllS SOlll. The 
down and cast into the to i • t 

fire, so then, from sap being right the fruit will be right. Jesus 
their fruits ye shaii teaches that the laws of the intellectual and spi- 

know them. x 

ritual world are as settled and as regularly oper- 
ative as those of the physical world. Where there is a really 
good and beautiful life there must be a really good and beauti- 
ful soul ; and where a man's character is really bad, no repressive 
carefulness can keep back the bitter fruits of bad acts. In either 
case, for a season, intervening circumstances may prevent the ob- 



are ravening wolves 
From their fruits ye 
shall know 



every good tree pro- 
duces beautiful fruits, 
and every rotten tree 
produces evil fruits. 
It is not possible that 
a good tree should pro- 
duce evil fruits, nor 
that a rotten tree 



* The original is not fairly met by 
our English word " narrow," the Greek 
word being a passive participle, strictly 



meaning " squeezed," as Dr. J. A. Alex 
ander notices. 



i 



THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



303 



server from seeing the connection, but it will somehow finally 
assert itself. Hence the necessity of being more careful to culti 
vate the character than to protect the reputation. 



AGAINST HYPOCRISY. 

And now he turns to those who were gathering about him, and 
instructs them that mere profession of attachment to his person, 
that even zeal for the great work which he had „ .. * 

o Not * every one who 

undertaken, that even the possession of power to says to me, "Lord, 

r ii j-i <_ • l •-it ,i Lord," shall enter into 

perform deeds that are miraculous, will not be tnekingdomofthe hea- 

sunicient to insure them a place in the kingdom vens ; but he that does 

which fills all the heavens, — the great moral and Fathering LavenY 

spiritual kingdom which he is now preaching, — but Man y shaU Fav to me 

,...,, 1 ,. , in that day, "Lord, 

that it is absolutely necessary to establish a pro- Lordi have we not in 
found and lofty moral character, and that this can thv name poached, 

. . and in thy name ex- 

be done only by an inward conformity to the will pe iied many demons, 

of his heavenly Father. and hl th y* ame P er - 

d t formed many works of 

Tliat not only are professions comparatively power?" And then 
valueless, but that even the possession of singular 
gifts, such as excite the admiration of the world, 
will avail nothing in the absence of a true and 
high character, he teaches in a brief dramatic 
passage of almost fearful power. It is as if he had said : All 
time is not now. Days are coming after this day. To all hypo- 
crites and self -deceivers some day of exposure will come. They 
may plead against it. They may appeal to the eloquent sermons 
they have delivered in explanation or defence or enforcement of 
my doctrines ; they may appeal to the force that lay in them, which 
was sufficient to cast out the demons who had taken possession of 
men ; they may appeal to apparent miracles which they have per- 
formed in my name, and these appeals may be founded on facts 
which I will not deny. But this I will do, I will make such ex- 
posure of them as shall be the same as if in speech. I will tell them 
that I had never known them as being of my people and subjects 



will I profess t to them, 
"I never knew you." 
Separate yourselves 
from me, ye who aie 
working lawlessness. 



* The Greek ov Tra? 8 \eya>v . . . etae- 
XiVTtrai does not signify that every one 
who calls Jesus ' ' Lord ' ' shall be excluded 
from the kingdom which he was preach- 
ing ; but that calling him so does not of 
itself secure such admission. 



f The word in the Greek is striking. 
It means, as Alford points out, a state- 
ment of the simple truth of facts as op 
posed to the false coloring and self-de- 
ceit of the hypocrites. 



304 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

of the heavenly kingdom ; that I always knew that they were not 
doing my Father's wilL 

Then, after that startling announcement, which was all the 
more terrible because the day was not designated, Jesus turned 
upon the crowd about him, and in substance said : " Seeing that 
this is the case, I charge every man whose life is a series of works 
done lawlessly, without regard to the law of the right, which is 
the will of my heavenly Father, to separate himself from me and 
my community. Whatever power to perform miracles he may 
seem to possess, I acknowledge no gifts and no professions. Char- 
acter is everything. Law is eternal. God is the law-maker. 
Those who obey Him follow me ; let others separate themselves." 

It must not be unnoticed that Jesus asserts that it is possible for 
one who does not conform to God's moral law to cast out demons 
and perform works of power and wonder, that is to say, miracles, 
or seem to do so. The performance of miracles, therefore, accord- 
ing to this teaching of Jesus, is no proof that the teacher who 
does them is true, or that his teachings are in accordance with 
truth. It follows that he did not lay his claim to the attention of 
the world upon the miracles which he performed. He claimed, 
as we shall see, through all his course, to be something higher than 
a miracle-worker, namely, to be a teacher of truth, and to be king 
over all other teachers and over all other men in that he taught 
the truth authoritatively. He claimed to have the right to say 
what the truth is, and declare it, not as a discovery made by his 
intellect, not as an inspiration from some spiritual force outside of 
himself, but as originally knowing it and authoritatively declar- 
ing it. He certainly conformed his subsequent teachings to these 
announcements in the Mount Sermon, in which we learn that a 
truth is greater than a miracle, and to obey God is better than to 
do marvellous works. 

conclusion: the safe foundation of character. 

This wonderful discourse terminates with a striking parable. 
A-s Jesus had begun with an enumeration of characteristics, he 
closes with a description of the trials of character, in which he 
contrasts the stability of one with the downfall of another. All 
goodness and safety lie in placing the life upon the truth and 
remaining there. Knowledge of truth is in no way helpful to a 
man if he do not obey the truth ; it rather makes his destruction 



PHE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 305 

more appalling. The same kind of trial comes to those who are 
mere hearers oi truth and to those whose lives are conformed 
to it. To all outward appearance the characters 

x x Every one, then, who 

of the two men were the same, except as to foun- hears these words o/ 
dation. Both built. Both built residences, not ^^be^^atT^ 
mere sheds. The houses were the same. If both wise man, w\.o bum i, is 

house upon the rock : 

had been built upon the rock, both would have and down came th, * 
stood. It was not the materials or the architec- can^and th e e wmdl 
ture that was at fault. It was the foundation. If blew > and feU on that 

house, and it fell not ; 

the winds, the rains, and the freshets could have for it had been founded 
swept away the foundation of the first, his house ^^^hea^a^ 
would have fallen and its downfall have been words of mine, and does 

■ . them not, shall be liken- 

great. If the sandy foundation or the second man e d to a foohsh man, 
had been able to resist the winds, the rains, and wh0 buUt his hou8e 

J ' upon the sand : and 

the freshets, his house was good and strong enough down came the shower, 
to have stood. But the stronger the timbers, and an * ^ flood f «""*' 

° ' and the winds blew. 

the more thoroughly knitted and nailed together, and smote that house, 
the more prodigious the wreck and ruin when the ^^ and its far 
foundation subsided and the lofty and strong 
edifice collapsed. Men who pay no attention to the upbuilding 
of their characters may fall and attract little attention. Men who 
are most careful to build up their characters, and yet secure no 
foundation, have no security, whatever be the materials or the 
painstaking. This is the important and generally neglected thought 
to which Jesus calls attention. It is the collapse of character 
which is the most appalling catastrophe possible in the universe. 

This Discourse has been dwelt upon at length, because as Jesus 
came a Teacher of Truth his words are most important, and this 
is the longest report of his speeches made in any 

° ± . x J The manner of Jesus. 

biographical memoir extant. It must be supposed 
to embrace the essence and spirit of the gospel he came to pro- 
mulgate. We have the recorded statements, the propositions ver- 
bally rendered, but there was something in the manner of Jesus 
that was extraordinary. There was a tone which made his hear 
eis feel that this was a man altogether superior to any other 



* The articles as used in the original 
show that all those things were familiar 
to the hearer ; that from personal obser- 
vations they knew the rock, the sand, 
the shower, the sudden swelling of riv- 

2C 



ers into freshets, and the fierce winds. 
The word translated floods means rivers, 
but in this case it obviously means riven 
swollen into floods. 



306 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEB IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

" greatest man," because the latter was compelled to enforce his 
teaching either by an argument or by authority, by showing that 
what he said was true or by invoking the authority of the ancients. 
Jesus did no such thing. He announced the truth as a monarch 
announces an imperial edict : " I say unto you." The people were 
struck with astonishment. They had heard learned men. They 
had heard enthusiasts. They had heard the Scribes and John the 
Baptist. In the case of Jesus it was not learning. It was not 
eloquence. It was authority. He made them feel his royal pre- 
rogative. No other man had ever done so before. No man in 
modern times is known to have made anything like a respectable 
imitation of this marvellous -impression. We can see how dicta- 
torially the discourse is constructed. We must fancy the manner 
of him who spoke under the conviction that he had the right to 
declare what the truth is, and that of the finality of his announce- 
ments there was to be no discussion, and from his supreme deci- 
sions there could be no appeal. 



CHAPTER Y. 



IN CAPKKNATJM AND NAIN. 



Upon his return to Capernaum an incident occurred in the 
history of Jesus of very great importance. A Koman company 
of soldiery held the post in the town. The cen- 

, , , , n Matt. viii. 5-13 ; 

turion in command was a person remarkable tor Luke ^ 1-m Jesua 
his faith, his humility, and his large charity. heals the centurion's 
Having had Roman and perhaps Greek culture, 
he had so much respect for the Jewish religion that he had actu- 
ally erected a synagogue for the use of the Jewish residents. 
Such considerate liberality had won the regard of even the Jew- 
ish elders, who became interested in whatever concerned this 
centurion. His case presented a violent contrast with the relation 
usually existing between the hating, subjugated Jew and the 
scornful, ruling Roman. This officer had a slave between whom 
and himself existed a strong attachment, as is not unusual in 
countries where slavery has existed ; * a sentiment of tenderness 
which is wholly incomprehensible to those whose servants have 
always been hirelings. He loved his servant, and his servant was 
ill of some paralytic disease which gave him excruciating torture. 
The centurion had probably studied the character of Jesus, and 
the history of the great works he had already performed, and had 
the utmost confidence in his healing power. The Jewish elders, 
whatever may have been their prejudices against Jesus, entertained 
so high a regard for the centurion that they waited on Jesus and 



* In the original Greek the word is 
wcus, boy. The ancient Hebrew had, 
and the modern French has, the same 
idiom. In the Southern States of North 
America, before the abolition of slavery, 
the servant was often called "boy," 
although an adult and perhaps advanced 
in years. It was a euphemism, a soft- 
ening term. If the slave were a mar- 



ried man, he was usually called "un- 
cle." Domestic servants were generally 
tenderly treated, and the whole family 
thrown into mourning when they died. 
Even under the rougher form of Roman 
slavery, Cicero expresses the great grief 
he suffered on the occasion of a death 
of a favorite servant. 



308 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

urged the exercise of his marvellous therapeutic faculty in behalf 
of the Homan slave. 

Jesus readily consented to accompany them. When the cen- 
turion learned that he was approaching the official residence, he 
sent his friends to Jesus with a message most 

The centurion's hu- -r-> , .-i.. -, . i j* n r 

mmty Koman, most military, and yet most full or. a 

beautiful humility and faith, containing the lof- 
tiest and the widest view of the character and power of Jesus 
which had as yet ever been uttered. He sent an expression of wor- 
shipful regard, and most humbly told Jesus that he did not feel 
himself worthy to have so illustrious a personage come under his 
roof, even as he had not felt himself worthy to approach the great 
Teacher, and had therefore accepted the kind mediation of the 
Jewish ecclesiastics. Moreover, he had such full faith in the 
transcendent power of Jesus that there could be no need that the 
great Healer should touch or even see his servant : he had but to 
speak the word. And he illustrated his idea by a military fact : 
he was a subaltern, under authority, with tribunes over him, and 
yet he was not compelled to be present at every place in person. 
And while he, as a soldier, was bound to obey his superior in 
office, he nevertheless commanded his slave, and that slave obeyed 
him as if he were the autocrat of the world. Now Jesus, in the 
spiritual realm, in command over the forces at work in the world, 
was more than centurion or tribune : he was Caesar, emperor, 
supreme commander. He had but to speak, and the hosts would 
obey him. 

The tender beauty and extraordinary grandeur of this faith 

aroused in Jesus sentiments of admiration. A Roman had so far 

overcome the power of prejudice as to believe 

Jesus admires him. x r -, 

that from the bosom of a broken and enslaved 
community might arise the great power of God. A soldier, an 
officer, representing imperialism, had, at the head of his command, 
come to believe in the superiority of spiritual power over mere 
brute force. Jesus turned to the crowd about him, and said, 
" Yerily I say to you, I have not found so much faith in Israel. 
And 1 say to you, That many shall come from the east and the 
west, and shall recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the 
kingdom of the heavens, but the sons of the kingdom shall be 
cast into the darkness outside. There shall be wailing and grat 
ing of teeth " Here was the prediction of a great revolution 



IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 309 

presented in a picture. It is the picture of a happy family. 
The elders are seated or stretched on couches, the children reclin- 
ing in their presence, enjoying their society. But strangers from 
a great distance, never expected, come in to this delightful domes- 
tic banquet. That is wonderful. But there is something more: 
the children are cast violently into the darkness outside, where 
they give vent to their rage in wailing and in grating their teeth. 
This seems to be as much as if he had said, The spiritual blessings 
of God's kingdom, which is as wide as all the heavens, are uot to 
be confined to a close corporation on earth. From any distance 
any man may come, and if he have such faith as numbered 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among the servants of the great King, 
he shall take his place : whereas those who rely upon a mere 
traditional right to the kingdom and its privileges shall be thrown 
outdoors into the night. It was a declaration of the spirituality 
and width of the kingdom of God, and was a great blow at sacer- 
dotalism and all churchism, a thing Jesus hated as a snare to 
human souls. 

He then justified the faith of the centurion by telling the mes- 
sengers to return and they should find it as their superior desired. 
Upon their return, they found that the servant 

1 ii m The servant healed. 

had recovered in that same hour. This wonder- 
ful cure is something. It stopped pain. It gratified and rewarded 
the centurion. But it was a small thing as compared with the 
saying of Jesus in the utterance of a grand truth which is to help 
the struggling hearts of truly religious men through all the ages. 
A truth is greater than a miracle. What Jesus said in the Mount 
Sermon is much more valuable to the world than what Jesus did 
among the diseased, when he had descended from his lofty pulpit. 
But the latter have a historical connection and unity with the 
former. It was because of what was in him that Jesus spake and 
did his wonderful words and acts. 

Not far from Capernaum, a few miles to the south of Mount 
Tabor, on the north-west declivity of Little Hermon, commanding 
a wide view of the plain of Esdraelon and the 
northern hills, stands a village now called Nein, Nain e 
in the time of Jesus bearing the name of Nain. 
On the day after the healing of the centurion's servant, Jesua 
visited this place with his company of disciples, and a great crowd 
attracted by his recent miracle. As he entered the town he s*w 



310 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN 1HE LIFE OF JESUS. 

a funeral procession. It was the Jewish custom that all who met 
such a procession should join it and add their lamentations to the 
tears of the mourners. This was a particularly touching case. 
The corpse was that of a man stricken down in his youth, being 
the only child of his mother, who was a widow. He was being 
carried in an open coffin. When Jesus saw the mother's sorrow, 
his heart was moved, lie stopped the bearers, and turning to the 
young man, he said, "I say unto thee, Arise." , And the dead 




sat up and began to speak. And Jesus "delivered him to his 
mother." 

Here was an open meeting between death and the forces of 

life which Jesus contained and directed. There was a crowd of 

spectators. There was no incantation. There 

Jesus raises the dead. x _^ . . ^^4.1,^ 

was no prayer. There was no invocation or the 
help of another. Out of himself, and by virtue of his own power 
and authority, Jesus said to a dead man, "/say, Arise." There 
was no gradual recovery. The dead was alive, sat up, and began 
to talk. It was the collision of life-force with the inertness of 



m CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 



311 



death, and the former prevailed. All such collisions are awful, 
but here was the additional element of extraordinariness. Usually 
death conquered. Here life was the victor. Great fear fell upon 
the people. Jesus had at first been a teacher, then a physician ; 
now he is a great prophet. Never since the days of Elisha had 
such a miracle been performed. For nine centuries the power of 
resurrection had been in abeyance. Now it had come back among 
men. In tones of awe they said one to another, " God has visifcd 
His people," and the fame of Jesus spread through all the regions 
round about.* 

While Jesus was thus increasing in popular attractiveness, and 
enlarging his field of operations, his friend John lay pining in the 
castle of MachsernSjf into which he had been 
thrown by Herod Antipas, because of his bold ^ j^ n e £ *° s * n . 
denunciation of that tetrarch's crimes and public Luke ™- 18 - 35 ? Matt 
scandals. John had hailed Jesus as the " Coming 
One," the Anointed, the Deliverer. Sixteen months had passed 
since the inauguration of Jesus, and as yet John had not heard 
that he had begun to perforin such Messianic acts as the Jews 
looked for in the Deliverer. From a national blaze of reputation 
John had suddenly gone down into the gloom of a dungeon. The 
lion had been caged. This grand spirit that had walked the 
wilderness and the shores of Jordan, and had drawn vast crowds 
to hear his roaring eloquence, lay cankering in the silent solitude 
of a prison. Day and night, through months of winter and of 
spring he lay. Now and then notices of the doings of Jesus had 



* But the contrast between the pray- 
erful efforts of the prophets and the 
sublime authoritative call of Jesus must 
always be noticed. It is set forth in a 
passage in Massillon's sermon, Sur la 
Divinite de Jesus- Christ, which is worth 
quotation for its great eloquence, finer 
in the original than I can give in a trans- 
lation : l " Elias raised the dead, it is 
true, but he was obliged to throw him- 
self often on the corpse of the child he 
would resuscitate : he breathed hard, 
he drew himself together, he threw 
h imself about ; it is plain that he is in- 
voking a power outside himself (un 
puissance etrangere), that he is recall- 



ing from the empire of death a soul 
that is not submissive to his voice, and 
that he is not himself the master of 
death and of life. Jesus Christ raises 
the dead as he does the most common 
actions ; he speaks as a master to those 
who are slumbering in the eternal sleep ; 
it is quite apparent that he is the God 
of the dead as well as of the living, but 
always the most serene when he is per- 
forming the grandest deeds. " 

f Next to Jerusalem, the best forti 
fled place in the Holy Land. It was 
near the summer residence of Herod in 
Per®. 



312 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

reached him. All that these seemed to show was the free and 
easy manner in which the new Teacher mingled with peoples of 
all kinds, rising apparently above all ecclesiastical and national 
prejudices, and setting himself and his disciples free from the 
eremitical restrictions which characterized the lives of John 
and his disciples. John's sonl was growing weak with waiting. 
He was beginning to doubt. Had he made a mistake ? If Jesns 
were the Deliverer, why did he delay the deliverance ? 

It was probably at this juncture that John heard of some of the 
mighty works of Jesus. This increased rather than diminished 
John hears of works his perplexity. It seemed unaccountable to John 
of Jesus. that more than a year before he should have pro- 

phetically seen signs of Messiahship in Jesus which appeared most 
unquestionable, and that now Jesus had begun to perform miracles 
that surpassed the deeds of even Elijah, and that still he declined 
to assert his Messiahship. He determined to seek a solution of the 
♦ lifrlculty. Accordingly he sent two of his chosen disciples to 
Jesus. They found him surrounded by the populace. They ad- 
dressed to him publicly, in John's name, the question, "Art thou 
the Coming One, or do we look for another % " 

~No more unfortunate question, as coming from John, could have 
been propounded to Jesus at this moment, and under these cir- 

john's message to cumstances. It said to the people that the man 
jesus, and his reply. wnom they had regarded as one of the greatest of 
the prophets, who had introduced Jesus to public life in a season 
of great excitement, now that he had time for cool reflection, had 
begun to doubt the mission of Jesus. It was a blow on the heart 
of Jesus from the hand of his best friend. It showed him what a 
melancholy effect was being produced upon the mind of John by 
his long and cruel imprisonment. 

The acts and words of Jesus on this occasion passed up into the 
sphere of the sublime. John must be saved. That was the first 
thing. In the presence of the embassy from John, Jesus relieved 
many of the infirmities of the people, opened the eyes of the blind, 
and cured demoniacs. Turning to the messengers he said in sub- 
stance, " Go to John, and tell him what you yourselves have seen 
and have heard from reliable witnesses. The blind see, the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, 
and the men of humble souls have a jubilee, for they are hearing 
glad tidings. And happy is he who is not offended in me." 



IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 313 

That was the whole message to John. It implied more than it 
Said. Jesus did not wish to wound the imprisoned prophet as that 
friend had wounded him. He was grander than even the grand 
John. Instead of saying, " Woe to him who is offended in me," 
he puts it in the softer way, " Blessed he who is not offended." 
John knew what the prophets had indicated as true Messianic 
signs. He remembered the words of Isaiah in lxi. 1, 2, and xxxv 
5, 6, and other prophetic utterances. If these met in Jesus, then 
Jesus was the Messiah, and, for any who believed that, it was a 
happy thing to wait his motions and not be striving to precipitate 
his announcements. 
. But there were the people hearing all these things. The repu- 
tation of his incarcerated friend was dear to Jesus. He saw at 
once that the people might begin to turn against Defence of John by 
John, and charge him with weakness in thus so Jesus - 
strangely modifying his own endorsement of Jesus. As soon 
therefore as John's disciples had departed — for he would not even 
seem to flatter his great friend — he recalled to the minds of his 
hearers the picture of John in the glory of his strength, in the 
height of his popularity, when he was crowding the Jordan with 
auditors and disciples. If they suspected John of being a vacil- 
lating weakling, it was doing him great injustice. He was no reed 
shaken in a wind. He was himself rather a storm that shook 
others. Nor was he a courter of public applause, a flatterer, or a 
sycophant. If he had been such he would have been found among 
the sumptuously dressed attendants on the court of Herod Antipas, 
instead of a prisoner wasting away in a dungeon because of his 
bold out-spokenness against the wrong. He was neither a reed 
shaken in the wind nor a delicate self-seeker. He was acknow- 
ledged as a prophet by those who heard his tremendous harangues 
at the Jordan. And Jesus asserted that John was more than an 
ordinary prophet, that he was as great as the greatest prophet, and 
that no greater man had ever been raised up by Providence for 
any work so great as that of John. With this generous eulogy he 
at once defended the reputation of his afflicted friend, and made 
his hearers to remember that the greatest men have their hours 
of weakness and distrust. 

But having so done justice to the character of John, he pro- 
ceeded to say, " Notwithstanding, he that is less in the kingdom 
of the heavens is greater than John." Here manifestly the speakej 



314 SECOND AND THTKD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

draws a distinction between the world which closed with John 
and the world which opened with himself. John had not become 

Relative estimate of a citizen of the kingdom of the heavens. Jesus 
John - is proclaiming that kingdom. John had not been 

set free. He was still held by formalisms, and still made much 
of baptisms and mortifications. He had not yet risen to regard 
the kingdom of God as a kingdom of the heavens, covering all 
parts of the universe and running through all the ages, of which 
our planet and the time of our generation make a very, very small 
part. Jesus came speaking the breadth of God's love and God's 
law. He came to preach those principles which rituals, and 
canons, and human forms of creeds and hierarchies cannot bind ; 
principles which survive all human institutions, all consecutive 
literatures and civilizations, and which vitalize them all. He that 
is less in position, or office, or native endowments than John, less 
in relation to this kingdom than John to the old theocracy, is, 
nevertheless, greater than John. He has gone into the temple on 
whose porch died all these greatest men who knew things only 
in their outwards. 

It is to be carefully noted that Jesus does not say that the 
crowds who waited upon his ministry are so superior ; that those 
who after him were to pervert the name of Christian and preach 
Church ism were so superior. Very far from that. That was pre- 
cisely the defect in the Jews generally, and in John specially. 
A modern churchman, of any sect, is precisely in the condition of 
the Israelite who depended upon his having Abraham to his 
father. He is a citizen of perhaps a snug little kingdom of the 
earth, but he is not a citizen of the broad kingdom of the heavens. 
He is depending upon what must perish if the world shall pass 
away, and not upon what will survive the measureless cycles of 
eternity. He that builds on churchism, builds on the sand : he 
that builds on the words of Jesus erects his edifice upon the rock. 
He that even measurably recognizes the kingdom of the heavens, 
and strives to live according to its wide, deep, ceaseless laws, is a 
greater man than the man who is greatest in a kingdom of cir- 
cumcisions, baptisms, and general decent ritualisms. That seems 
to be what Jesus taught. 

The law and the prophets, he proceeded to teach, did their work 

up to John's completion of his public ministry. Now, although 
that last and greatest of the prophets had retired from his actual 



IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 



315 



labors, the spirit of his work lived. He had been a hei aid. He 
had aroused the people. He had announced a coming King and 
a coming kingdom. There was power in the announcement and 
in the rushing influences which had begun to break down ecclesi- 
astical barriers, and bring the world under the influence of this 
kingdom. John could not retract. He had excited a furore 
which should increase. From his days the kingdom of the heav- 
ens suffers violence ; people violently press into it; multitudes are 
eager to break the shell and reach the kernel ; multitudes are zeal- 
ously striving to rise into the higher life. John had come in the 
spirit and power of Elias to prepare the way of the Lord of the 
kingdom. 

All this explanation and defence was made to a fickle genera- 
tion. Jesus knew their* waywardness. He reflected upon the 
treatment received by John and by himself. To Both Johnand Jesas 
John's baptism the common people and the pub- re i ected - 
licans had come ; but the Pharisees and Doctors of the Sacred 
Law had rejected him, and the same leaders had rejected Jesus : 
and the two rejections were for opposite reasons. He seemed 
for a moment at a loss how to describe this capriciousness, and 
then selected an illustration from the petulance of whimsical chil- 
dren so often exhibited in their sports. He described a party of 
boys at play in a town square. One party endeavors to draw the 
others into their amusements. First there is a mock wedding, and 
a portion would not join in that ; then the leaders get up a mock 
funeral, but the same companions refuse to take part in that ; 
whereupon the leaders break forth into vociferous reproaches : 
" What kind of fellows are you ? We have tried to amuse you 
every way. We have fluted, and you would not dance : we have 
played funeral, and you would not beat your breasts. What will 
please you?" So John came, an ascetic, withdrawing himself 
from the ordinary conventionalities of life. He was most abste- 
mious, confining himself to a diet of locusts and wild honey. The 
Pharisees and the Doctors denounced him as one possessed of a 
demon. He mourned ; they did not lament. Jesus came, — the' 
Son of Man, as he calls himself in this passage, thus claiming 
the Messiahship,* — came eating and drinking as other men did, 



* The reader is again referred to Dan. 
vii. 13, where the phrase the "Son of 
Man " is used confessedly as a designa- 



tion of the Messiah. By applying it to 
himself Jesus obviously intended to>' 
claim Messianic functions and honors. 



316 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER TN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



having nothing singular in his habits. The Pharisees and the 
Doctors denounced him as a glutton and a wine-bibber, an associ- 
ate of tax-gatherers and vagabonds. He made music for them; 
they did not dance. Jesus closed this vivid invective by the irony 
of the saying, "And such is the justice which Wisdom receives at 
the hands of her professedly devoted children ! " 

Recalling the treatment which he had received from several 
towns in his beneficent mission, he breaks forth in words which 
show the depth of his grief and anger. " Woe to 
thee, Chorazin ! woe to thee, Bethsaida ! For if 
in Tyre and Sidon had been done the things of might which have 
been done in you, in old times, sitting down in bag-cloth and in 
ashes, they would have changed their minds and repented. But 
I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon 
in the day of separation than for you. And thou, Capernaum, 
why hast thou been exalted to heaven ? Thou shalt descend even 
l •) Hades ! " 



Denunciations. 




None of the three places thus denounced had any distinction 
beyond what they derived from the presence and works of 
Jesus, and they have all so passed away that the site of them is 
no longer definitely known. The Tyre and Sidon must he sup- 
posed to refer to the old Phoenician cities against which the 
prophets had hurled their predictions, and on the ruins of which 



IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 



317 



stood modern towns of the same name. Capernaum had been 
selected as his residence when Jesus had been driven from Naza- 
reth. The lesson seems to be that the neglect of superior privi 
leges brings the greater destruction. Jesus employed phrases from 
the pagan mythology to convey this idea, " heaven " as contrasted 
with " hades " signifying a contrast between great height of privi- 
lege and great depth of doom. 

A few days afterwards a Pharisee invited Jesus to an enter- 
tainment at his house, probably in Capernaum,* thus paying with 
a small civility the healing of some small ailmentf 
by the kindness and power of Jesus. The recep- Dine U s vrtthTpharisee, 
tion of the great Teacher does not seem to have and te anointed by a 



been eminently cordial. Simon felt compelled to 
invite him, and was probably glad to have the interview short. He 
showed few civilities to his distinguished guest. Nevertheless 
Jesus found sufficient reason for accepting the invitation. While 
reclining, with his unsandalled feet stretched from the rear of the 
couch, after the manner of the ancients, a woman of the city, who 
was a notorious sinner, came behind him with a vase of perfumed 
ointment, weeping, and unostentatiously wetting his feet with her 
tears, and with most exquisite reverence wiping them with her 
beautiful hair. Her adoring tenderness made her feel that when 
that delicious ointment had touched the holy feet of Jesus it was 
sweeter than ever before, and she instinctively caught it back into 
her tresses. 

The Pharisee at length noticed this, and reasoned thus : " This 
man has a certain strange power with him ; but if he were a 
true prophet he would know what kind of woman Jesilsreads ^^ 
this is who pollutes him by touching him, would tnou s Qts - 
know that she is a prostitute." Jesus read his thoughts. This 
Teacher seems to have been the first of pure men who had for- 
giveness and pity for that sin which, in a woman, no one, forgives. 
Turning to his host, he said : " Simon, I have something to say to 
you." And Simon replied, " Teacher, say it." "A money-lender 
had two debtors. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the 
other fifty. And when neither could pay he freely forgave them 



* Robinson and Meyer believe that it 
was Capernaum. 

f If Jesus had not conferred some 
favor upon him there had been no point 



in his comparison of those who love 
much, as the woman did, and those who 
love little, as the Pharisee did. 



313 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN" THE LD7E OF JESUS. 



both. 'Now, which of them will love him most % " Simon, not 
seeing as yet the bearing of the question, replied, " I suppose he 
to whom he forgave most." " Quite right," said Jesus ; and turn- 
ing upon his elbow as he reclined, so that he could seethe woman, 
he said, *' Simon, look at her : I entered your house a bidden guest, 
yet you failed of the ordinary courtesy of furnishing water for 
my 'feet,* while this woman has washed my feet with her tears 
and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no 
warm salutation : she has caressed my feet with kisses. You 
poured not even ordinary oil upon my head : she has expended 
her precious ointment on my feet." 

This was most delicately pungent. The woman had entered 
the apartment in the crowd accompanying the Teacher. Simon 
did not take offence at this, because he knew that 
Jesus had all kinds of characters in his train. 
But when he saw what he considered the polluting touch, he won- 
dered and was scandalized. Jesus most delicately gave him to 
understand that this unbidden guest was now in a better moral 
condition than the giver of the entertainment. Her great sins 
had been forgiven her, or else she never would have been so 
grateful. Jesus had done more for her, whatever it was, than he 
had done for Simon, and therefore she loved much more. It was 
no longer a prostitute who bent over his feet, but a penitent. She 
lingered. She had been a great sinner. It required distinct as- 
surance to confirm her faith. Jesus said to her : " Your sins are 
forgiven you." Then those who were reclining at the dinner- 
table began to whisper among themselves in protest against his 
assumption of power to forgive sins. It was greater to forgive a 
sin than perform a miracle. But Jesus repeated it, " Your faith 
has saved you ; go in peace." 

Who this woman was is not known. There is not the slightest 
intimation. By a most unhappy mistake Mary of Magdala, called 
This womanaiot Mary in our common version Mary Magdalene, has been 
of Magdaia. confounded with this woman, f This mistake has 

been perpetuated in painting and in sculpture, and is counte- 
nanced by the caption to the chapter of St. Luke in the English 



* Which was necessary in a country 
where men walked over dusty roads 
without shoes. 

f The anointing took place in Nain 



or Capernaum, of one of which cities 
this penitent sinner probably was a na- 
tive or an inhabitant ; but Mary was oi 
Magdala. 



IN CAPERNAUM AND NAIN. 



319 



version. But there is nothing whatever on record in the history 
to give the slightest coloring to this supposition. It is doing as 
much injustice to the truth of history as to suppose that the Vir- 
gin Mary was this sinner. The name of this penitent sinner is 
strictly withheld. There is nothing in the history of Mary of 
Magdala to justify this aspersion of her fair fame ; on the con- 
trary, we shall see how she came into greatest intimacy with the 
purest followers of Jesus, devoted herself to him, and came to 
be controlled by a powerful yet pure passion for Jesus, — the Yirgin 
Mary and the Magdalan Mary being his most devoted friends, 
and this latter Mary loving him quite as warmly as the Blessed 
Yirgin, but with an ardor which certainly was not mother-love. 




KCTNS AT TELL HUM. CAPEBNAOTf, 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE AND RETURN TO CAPERNAUM. 

Immediately after this, Jesus began another circuit of preach- 
ing and miracle-working, going from village to village and from 
Luke via. 1-3. Ac- city to city, preaching the happy news of God's 
companied by women, kingdom. On this tour he was accompanied by 
his twelve chosen Apostles, and by many women whom he had 
cured of evil spirits and other infirmities. This companionship 
with Jesus was not out of the usual order of things, since it was 
customary for women of means, especially for widows, to con- 
tribute of their substance to the support of rabbis whom they 
reverenced.* Three are mentioned as being in this company, 
namely, Mary called Magdalene, and Joanna, and Susanna. The 
first of these so devoted herself to Jesus that she became his chief 
friend among women, and it may be worth while to make a sum- 
mary of what we can learn concerning her. 

In the first place, it should be repeated that there does not ap- 
pear the slightest reason for believing that she had been an extra- 
ordinary bad woman, particularly that she was a prostitute, but 
quite the contrary. Here is one of those unhappy cases in his- 
tory in which some misapprehension has occurred which has suc- 
ceeded in branding a name with an undeserved infamy and 
perpetuating it through generations. Let us see what is said 
about her. 

El-Mejdel is the name of a "miserable little Muslim village," 
as Robinson calls it, which is most probably the representative of 
the town on the western shore of the lake of 
Gennesaret, known as Magadan in the days of 
Jusus, and so called in the chief MSS., although in the author- 
ized English version, and in the usually received Greek text of 
Matthew (xv. 39) it is written Magdala.f It was one of the many 

* See Jerome on 1 Cor. ix. 5. I embrace every point worth notice. 

f Prof. Stanley's description seems to | u Of all the numerous towns and vil- 



THE SECOND TOTJE OF GALILEE. 



321 



Mary Magdalene. 



Migdofa (^watch-towers) which existed in Palestine. The unfortu- 
nate identification of the saintly and loving friend of Jesus 
with the sinner who bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, has 
made Magdala, this Mary's birthplace, familiar to all modern 
languages. 

She comes before us first in this passage in St. Luke, associated 
with women of great respectability. These ladies were Joaima 
and Susanna. The former was the wife of Chuza, 
the steward of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of 
Galilee. It is not to be supposed that this lady of the court 
would associate herself with a " woman of the city," a street- 
walker, a prostitute, or probably eveu with one who had had that 
reputation. Moreover, the fact that Mary was engaged Avith these 
ladies in ministering to the personal wants of Jesus, shows that 
she, as well as each of the others, had means at her own disposal. 
She was not a woman of the lower ranks, in point either of prop 
erty or of reputation. 

In this passage, and in Mark xvi. 9, the fact is stated that out 
of her Jesus had cast seven devils. Modern thought has been 
accustomed to associate demoniac possession with 

. „ . Her "seven devils. w 

the idea 01 bad moral character in the pos- 
sessed, which, however, is a very great error. Children, women 
of good repute, people in any class of society, had been liable to 
this terrible disease. It is a very proper remark, therefore, that 
we must think of her " as having had, in their most aggravated 
forms, some of the phenomena of mental and spiritual disease 
which we meet with in other demoniacs, the wretchedness of de- 
spair, the divided consciousness, the preternatural phrensy, the 
long-continued fits of silence." Her case had been so marked 
and painful that the contrast it afforded with the serenity of her 
condition after the great Healer had restored her, made such an 
impression upon those who were familiar with the circle of Jesus, 



lages in what must have been the most 
thickly peopled district of Palestine, 
one only remains. A. collection of a 
few hovels stands at the south-east cor- 
ner of the plain of G-ennesaret, its 
name hardly altered from the ancient 
Magdala or Migdol, so called probably 
from a watch-tower, of which ruins ap- 
pear to remain, that guarded the en- 

21 



trance to the plain. A large solitary 
thorn-tree stands beside it. The situa- 
tion, otherwise unmarked, is dignified 
by the high limestone rock which over- 
hangs it on the south-west, perforated 
with caves, recalling, by a curious 
though doubtless unintentional coinci- 
dence, the scene of Correggio's cele- 
brated picture." 



^22 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



and who afterwards chronicled their movements, that repeated 
mention is made of the fact. 

It seems probable from the whole history that other women 

came and went, and did for Jesus all their love prompted and 

their means allowed, but Mary Magdalene never 

Her devotion to Jesus. _ ^ 

forsook him. Joanna and Susanna were not with 
him in his last moments. Mary Magdalene was. She was then 
accompanied by the wife of Alphseus and the wife of Zebedee. 
She remained even after Mary, the mother of Jesus, had left the 
sight of horror.* Her love never faltered. The other women 
stood afar off. She stood close to the cross, where she heard all 
his last words and groans. She endured the sight of the death 
of him whom her heart adored. She was present, perhaps ten- 
derly aiding, when the body was taken down and when it was 
wrapped in fine linen, and probably assisted in depositing it in the 
sepulchre, and then, with her friend Mary the mother of Joses, 
she sat down over against the sepulchre. All her attentions were 
such as the daintiest love gives to the most honorable and 
dearly beloved. She had regarded him as a man ; but as the 
holiest, most gifted, most charming of all the sons of men. She 
saw him buried, and had no hope, nor even thought, of his re- 
surrection. She wrapped her heart up with her lord in the linen 
cloth they wound about the precious limbs. The next day was a 
sorrowful Sabbath, and on the morning following she went to the 
sepulchre and found it empty. She saw angels there : but one 
Jesus was to her worth more than a thousand angels. She flew 
with anguish to Peter and John, and ran back with them to the 
sepulchre, crying, " They have taken away my lord, and I know not 
where they have laid him." And then she sank down almost to the 
verge of that horrible pit of mental disease from which she had 



* From reading all the accounts in 
the four historians, it would seem that 
there was a crowd of women sorrow- 
fully present at the execution, but all 
"standing- afar off." Some sign from 
Jesus, or the promptings of nature, sent 
his mother Mary, and his aunt, and his 
friend Mary Magdalene, and his disciple 
John up near the cross. When Jesus 
had committed his mother to this disci- 
ple, the latter drew her away to the 
city. The aunt seems to have accom- 



panied the mother," so that only Mary 
Magdalene was present. Mary the 
mother of Jesus joined her, probably 
coming up from the crowd which stood 
at a distance, and sat down with her be- 
side the sepulchre. But the whole story 
puts Mary Magdalene forward. This 
much of the history we have been com- 
pelled to anticipate to make clear the 
case of Mary of Magdala, the sweet and 
suffering saint. 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 323 

been lifted. When Jesus came she did not perceive that it was 
he. He spoke. He said " Mary." Probably it was the one tone 
in which he had always spoken to her. It thrilled her back to 
widest consciousness, and she rushed forward to clasp his feet. 

Can there be anything more beautiful than this ? Every great 
man — great in purity as well as power — has some special, honored 
friend among women, which friend is not his kins- The relation of Jesus 
woman. Such Jesus had, and that nearest and tolier - 
dearest friend was Mary called Magdalene. It was not fitting 
that he should marry. His mission was too awful. He was to 
stand in sublime solitariness. He had no earthly father ; he was 
never to have bodily descendant. But he had a human heart, and 
must have had craving for human love. He was the incarnation 
of goodness, and had no fierce words of denunciation for fallen 
women, whom he raised as well as forgave ; but his whole record 
is so spotless that it shocks us to think that such a being could 
have found his best beloved friend in a former prostitute, and that 
she who had been so morally degraded could have had more than 
any other woman the fineness of soul to have been able to appre- 
ciate Jesus and to attach herself to such a man with such adherent 
love. She was a beautiful character. She had been a great suf- 
ferer. Jesus had healed her. She was all the finer for what she 
had endured. She was the watchful attendant of his footsteps. 
Hers were probably the last human eyes into which the dying 
eyes of Jesus looked, and hers the first human eyes he is repre- 
sented to have shown himself unto when he came back from the 
o^rave. This is all that is told. 

It is most exquisite. The utmost delicacy is here. It is the 
sweetness, not the words of the narrative, which betrays the holy 
love. And after that last interview in which Jesus The most beautiful 
showed her how her mortal affection must be lifted of loves - 
into religious worship, there is nothing more said of Mary. And 
then history takes this beautifullest love of all the world and mars 
it, and blotches her name, and associates her with all the fallen of 
her sex. It is to us one of the most awful problems of human 
biography. Hers was a bitterly beautiful lot. She had suffered. 
She had recovered. She loved her healer. She never could be 
asked to cross a certain line. But there she was met, more than 
any other woman, by the confidence and affection of the most ex- 
ceptional of all marvellously fine characters. He died looking at 



324 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



her. He rose and showed himself first to her. If she lived to 
be a century old, she had such a memory as never has been vouch- 
safed to any other woman. In her real life she was lifted to a 
heaven of love ; in history she has been cast down to a hell of 
infamy. Let her be restored. The truth does restore her. Th6 
Friend of Jesus was a blessed saint. 

When Jesus and his party returned to Capernaum, so great was 

his farue that crowds assembled about the dwelling and pressed 

Capernaum Mark tflem so m uch that they could not even eat bread. 

m. 19-35 ; Matt. xii. His mother and brothers, learning how he was ex- 

22-50 ; Luke xi. 14-54. -• i • • in -, -, ,-, -. 

ertmg nimseli, and how the crowds were pressing 
him, said, " He is beside himself," and went to restrain him from 
such excessive labors. Although they did not believe in his doc- 
trines, they loved his person and had tender care of him. But the 
multitude blocked the entrance. 

Meanwhile there had been brought him one possessed of a 
demon,* and at once blind and dumb. It was certainly the most 
The blind and dumb exactiug demand upon power to heal this com- 
demoniac. plication of mental and physical disease. If the 

objective theory of demoniacal possession be held, then some evil 
spirit had found in this human soul an organ it could use, and 
in malignity had deprived the victim of sight and speech. On 
the subjective theory, the psychical ailment had struck out and 
had bedumbed and blinded the patient. In either view Lange 
has graphically described the case, in his Leben Jesu, when he 
says : " Shut up in this most shocking manner did this being come 
before Jesus, like a dark riddle of hellish restraint and human 
despair." The simple statement of the historian is, "And he 
healed him, insomuch that the blind and the dumb both spake 
and saw." This was a culminating marvel. It was a manifold 
miracle. It showed the power of Jesus over nature and super- 
nature. It threw the populace into an ecstasy. They hailed Jesus 
with Messianic salutations. They cried out, " Is not this the Son 
of David?" 

At this time there had come down from Jerusalem to Caper- 
naum delegations from the Scribes and Pharisees, engaged in the 



* It cannot be necessary to go into the 
question of demoniacal possession every 
time an incident of this species of ail- 



ment appears. The reader is referred 
to the ample discussion given this sub« 
ject on p. 172. 



THE SECOND TOTJK OF GALILEE. 



325 



work of laying snares for Jesus that they might with impunity 
put him out of the way. Affairs had now reached a climax. 
He had raised the son of the widow of Nam ; he 

Pharisaic conspirators. 

had made a circuit through Galilee, increasing 
his train and his fame ; and he had returned to find the people re- 
garding him with greater reverence and wonder than before ; and 
he had cured the " possessed " man, opening his eyes and ears and 
restoring him to mental sanity. He had thus aroused the popu- 
lar enthusiasm to a degree that they were ready to crown him king 
and accept him as the Messiah. As he would not rank himself 
with the ruling class, but had set his influence directly against 
their authority, the hour had come when something must be said. 
The unfortunate expression which the other sons of Mary had 
used in kindly meaning toward Jesus, namely, " He is beside him- 
self," was probably suggested, if not it was seized, They charge that 
by the hierarchic party and employed against him. Jesns has a <iemon. 
" You see that his own mother's sons say that he is deranged. The 
truth is that this fellow has Beelzebul,* and casts out devils only 
through Beelzebul, the prince of the devils." It is to be noticed 
that they do not deny the apparently hopeless condition of the 
patient, nor the greatness of the miracle which Jesus had openly 
performed in the presence of them all. They did as other men 
do when a great good deed has been performed by one whose 
goodness they do not desire to admit : they assigned the good deed 
to a bad motive and a wicked source. 

This accusation roused Jesus. He called them nearer to him 
and addressed them first in a parable. "Every kingdom divided 
against itself is desolated, and every city or house divided against 
itself shall not stand. If the Satan cast out the Satan, he is 
divided against himself. How then shall his kingdom stand?" 
Whatever anarchy there may be in this kingdom of the Satan, 
there is this point of unity, that all its energies are directed 
toward marring where he cannot destroy the kingdom of God. 
He shows how this perverse captiousness is caught in its own net- 
Jews had of changing a letter so as to 
convert a word into another having a 
contemptible signification. As it does 
not appear earlier in Jewish literature, 
may it not have been invented to deride 
Jesus on this special occasion ? 



* This is the word in the original, not 
Beelzebub. The name of the Philistine 
god was Baal-zebul, god of the fly, wor- 
shipped as represented by the Scara- 
bceus pillulariiis, or dunghill beetle. 
Beelzebul, which means dung-god, is a 
form given according to a custom the 



326 



SECOND AND THIED PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESTS. 



The reply of Jesus. 



There is certainly one course of conduct which cannot be said to 
be instigated by Satan, and that is such conduct as shows the 
actor's determination to do all he can to overthrow Satan. This 
is the brief and conclusive reply. 

But Jesus furthermore said, " If I by Beelzebul cast out de- 
mons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they 
shall be your judges." He calls attention to the 
fact that he was not the only healer of these ter- 
rible maladies ; that there were those among the sons or disciples 
of the Pharisees who had been healers, and whose success had 
always been attributed to the aid of the Spirit of God.* His 
works in this department surpassed those of their sons in the 
greater malignity of the cases cured, in the suddenness of the re- 
lief afforded, and in the authority with which he spoke the word 
of power. The people testified (Matt. ix. 33) on one occasion 
that " it was never so seen in Israel." Some milder forms had 
yielded to the spiritual influence of some of the healers, but never 
in such a manner had they seen such a case so thoroughly cured. 
If the one had no collusion with Beelzebul, the other must not be 
so charged. If not of the Evil One it must be of God. " But 
if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of 
God has come upon you." A celestial surprise had come upon 
that generation. Without their expectation the kingdom of God 
had come in on them. And whether the Pharisees believed it or 
not, the long prayed for kingdom had come. And this was the 
king of that kingdom. 

Jesus represents himself as more powerful than Satan. " How 
can one enter the house of the strong and carry off his instruments f 
powerful except he first bind the strong ? and then he can 
plunder his house." In these words Jesus claims 
to have the power to bind the Evil One and wrench the prey from 
him. When a man of power, able to defend himself against or- 
dinary robbers, is openly deprived of his goods in broad clay by 



±ie is more 
than Satan. 



* See in Acts xix. 13 an account of 
travelling exorcists, the seven sons of 
a high-priest. The argument of Jesus 
has the same force whether the ordinary 
Jewish exorcists did really cast out 
demons or were only believed to have 
done so. In either case their success 
Was always spoken of favorably, and that 



the greater deeds of Jesus should be 
attributed to a bad source shows the 
malignity of his accusers : and that was 
all his argument was intended to estab- 
lish. 

f The word means all the furniture 
which constitutes the outfit of a house, 
all the vessels and instruments. 



THE SECOND TOTTK OF GALILEE. 327 

one whom he sees, then no one is so much a fool as to say that the 
strong man robbed himself. All say that some one who was able 
to bind the strong man had done so, and then spoiled him. Jesua 
declared that a stronger than Satan had come. The Messiah was 
to be the hero of God. All such prophecies as are represented by 
the passages in Isaiah (xlix. 24, and more particularly liii. 12, 
u He shall have the strong ones for a prey ") were attributed to 
him. Now Jesus declares himself that Mighty One. Then he 
pushes the ecclesiastical clique of inquisitors and persecutors a 
little harder. He plants himself against Satan. These two 
champions are at war for the empire of the world. One is to con- 
quer. All must take sides. There is no neutrality. The fight 
is over the surface of the universe. Satan is to be destroyed, or 
Jesus. All who are not for Jesus are for Satan. And thus he 
swiftly retorts the charge, and shows them to be in league with 
Satan by opposing him % There is no passivity possible to a 
rational being. " Whoever does not collect * in aid of me, 
scatters." He that does not help the work of Jesus breaks down 
and scatters the work of God. Opposition to Jesus is allegiance 
to Satan. 

Jesus then uttered one of the most profound and mysterious 
sentences which ever fell from his lips. Few people have been 
able to read it without shuddering. It is so im- Blasphemy against 
portant that I shall present a careful translation, the Hol y Ghost - 
hoping to be helped thereby to a better understanding of the 
words. The passage in Matthew is, " Because this is the case, I 
say to you, Every (kind of, or form of) sin and blasphemy shall 
be forgiven to men. But the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be 
forgiven. If one speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall 
be forgiven him ; but if one speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall 
not be forgiven him, in this age nor in the coming." In Mark it 
is : " Assuredly (amen) I say to you, That all sins shall be for- 
given to the sons of men, and the blasphemies, whatever they 
shall have blasphemed. But whoso shall blaspheme in reference 
to the Holy Spirit has not forgiveness for an age (during the aeon), 
but is held bound by a perpetual loss." Mark says that he 
uttered these words because the Pharisees had said, " He has a fil- 
thy spirit." The passage in Luke gives no variation from these two. 

* The word does not mean coming j street, but rather conveys the idea c! 
together, as a crowd collects upon the I gathering a harvest. 



328 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



We may be helped to the meaning of this utterance by recol- 
lecting that it is a warning, and that the Pharisees had not yet 
committed this fatal offence ; and also, that whatever this destruc- 
tive sin may be, it is a sin of words, of speech rather than of action 
or of thought. The perpetrator of this hopeless sin must have 
said it ! It is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, not a sin against 
the Holy Spirit. It seems to be an open, outspoken vituperation 
of the Holy Spirit of God, deliberately uttered by a man when 
he knows what he says to be false, and says it for the distinct pur- 
pose of committing spiritual suicide. The enemies of Jesus had 
not yet done this. They had said that Jesus had an unclean 
spirit ; but this they had uttered in the heat of passion. Never- 
theless, that speech had come out of bad hearts, and he kindly 
warns them to beware lest they come to such a state as to be able 
to commit this fatal crime. They were blaspheming the Son of 
Man in their anger, and, because the Holy Spirit of God was in 
him, as he claimed, they might by persistent wicked intent against 
him come to some such state as to be able to do what would be 
endlessly destructive to their souls. 

The sense in which Jesus uses the word " aeon," age, it is im- 
portant to know. . In the lexicons it has different meanings, as 
has the corresponding adjective, "aeonfal," which 
seems to signify " continuous duration throughout 
the period referred to," and that period, the duration indicated 
by " aeon," must be understood by the context.* One of the most 



The word " seon.' 



* Thus the phrase eis rov aicova, which 
I have translated by the two phrases 
for an age, or, during the ceon, is precise- 
ly the phrase which occurs in 1 Cor. 
viii. 13, where Paul says that if meat 
make his brother to offend, he will eat 
no more meat eis top aia>va, for an age, 
during the seon, but in the common 
version, "while the world standeth," 
which seems to me a good translation ; 
but a better rendering would be, " as 
long as I live," as Paul simply meant to 
make a strong assertion in regard to his 
total abstinence from meat, not in 
eternity but in his lifetime. We find 
in Eph. hi. 9, and in Col. i. 26, the 
phrase, a-nh r&v al&pwv, and in Romans 



xvi. 25, xP nl/0 ^ olcxjitois. The common 
version renders the first passage "from 
the beginning of the world ;" the second, 
"from ages ;" and the third, ' ' since the 
world began ; " but the phrase in the 
first two instances is the same in the 
original, and strictly translated means, 
" from the ages," and the third signifies 
"through age-long times." These ci- 
tations are made that the reader may 
see that the signification of the word is 
limited by its connections. The Hebrew 
word which the Septuagint translates 
by these Greek words, is one applied to 
many things which have passed away, 
such as the Jewish priesthood, the time 
for which a person whose ears had been 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 



329 



striking characteristics of the teaching of Jesns is the absence of 
all metaphysical terms. Thus he has no word for eternity, or 
eternal, nor apparently any phrase to convey the idea of never- 
beginningness and never-endingness. Whatever he speaks of 
is mentioned as if its duration were connected with an seon, or 
the seons, an age, or the ages. So here, " in this seon, or age," 
may mean the age before the establishment of the Messianic king- 
dom, and the " seon, or age to come" may mean the Messianic age ; 
or the former may mean the duration of the human race, or any 
part of them, on the earth, and the latter the duration of the 
human race, or any part of them, elsewhere and hereafter. Or 
the whole phrase may be taken hyperbolically, to give the utmost 
strength to the expression ; or it may be taken literally. If liter- 
ally, whatever may be the interpretation given to the special 
phrases, the statement must have meant, to any intelligent and 
attentive hearer, that it was possible to commit a sin, from the 
direful and spiritually ruinous results of which there could never 
be any escape. But if taken literally, and " the age to come " be 
understood to mean the state of human existence beyond the 
grave, then the words also imply that there are sins and blasphe- 
mies that may be forgiven after death ; nay, that every kind may 
be forgiven except blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. No less 
a person than Augustine * does actually mafee that inference, and 
the Roman Catholic Church teaches it for a dogma. 

" Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make 
the tree rotten and its fruit rotten : for the tree is known by its 
fruits." This was the proposition with which 

iii i -i • • t • i "^kc tree and its fruits. 

Jesus closed the reply to his enemies, it is the 
announcement of a well-known fact in nature, that the outer is a 
representative of the inner. Good fruits come only from good 



bored might be held in slavery, the 
doors of the temple, landmarks, waste 
places, etc. The Aramaic word which 
Jesus used in his discourses was doubt- 
less the best possible representative of 
the Hebrew and Greek words employed 
in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Greek 
translation of the Evangelists, and there- 
fore subject to the same interpretations 
as those words. 

* He says, in a passage of which the 
following is a literal translation, "As 



in the resurrection of the dead there 
will be some who, after the punishment 
which the spirits of the dead suffer, will 
receive mercy, so that they will not be 
cast into everlasting fire. For it could 
not with truth be said of some that 
their sins would not be forgiven in this 
world, or in that which is to come, un- 
less there were others who would be 
forgiven in the world to come, though 
not in this world." I think the phrase 
is not to be taken literally. 



330 SECOND AND THERD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

trees, and bad fruits from bad trees. He probably designed this 
statement to tell both ways. As if he had said, So far as I am 
concerned, take all my life that men can see. Does that look as 
though it were the product of a bad soul ? So far as you are con- 
cerned, the fact that you speak such vile things should alarm you 
as to your real character. 

And then he broke upon them with language of great severity. 

" Offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things % 

For the mouth utters the overflowings of the 

Severe words. , ° 

heart. A good man throws good things out of 
the good treasure, and an evil man throws evil things out of the 
evil treasury. But I say unto you, That every idle word men speak 
they shall render an account thereof in the day of separation. 
For from thy words thou shalt be declared right, and from (thy) 
words thou shalt be condemned." This is a broad and deep say- 
ing for one whose whole teaching seems to dwell upon character 
and its proper cultivation. Commentators have generally endeav- 
ored to explain it away. But the truth lies open on the plain 
surface of the statement, if it be only considered that a man's 
words invariably show his real character ; not a word here and 
there, detached speeches, but the whole body of all his utterances, 
all his words spoken through all his life. Speech is the overflow 
of the heart. A man's heart is full of that kind of thing which 
drops from his tongue and pen. It is utterly impracticable for 
any man to misrepresent himself in the whole body of his speech. 
It is the forgetf ulness of this which allowed one of the most 
sagacious of commentators * to say that such a criterion " would 
be absurd, and put it in the power of any man to settle his own 
destiny by sheer talking or profession." Not at all. Suppose a 
bad man, intending thus to settle his destiny, should utter, from 
day to day even, words which in themselves are good, but with 
the intent to deceive his fellow-men as to his real character. 
Those words are then bad. Men might be deceived ; but the 
Judge knows his heart, and knowing that he uttered hypocritical 
words, from those very words he shall be condemned as a hypo- 
crite. Even idle words, words that carry no meaning and go on 
no mission, come out of a meaningless and empty soul and con- 
demn the man as worthless. Or, if the word be one of wanton 
thoughtless calumny the utterer shall not escape condemnation. 
* Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander. 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 



331 



Jesus had commenced to act so vigorously on the offensive that 
the hierarchic clique felt compelled to make some movement 
which should divert the force of his vigorous 

# A sign demanded. 

blows. The crowd was increasing and growing 
excited. It was known that the wonder-loving multitude looked 
for displays of miracles on the part of the Messiah when he 
should come. So their leader said, " Teacher, we wish to see a 
sign from you." That is, a sign showing yourself the Messiah. 
He replied, " A wicked and idolatrous* generation seeks a sign! 
No sign shall be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet : for 
as Jonah was three days and three nights f in the belly of the 
great fish,J thus shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the 
earth three days and three nights." 

He charged them that they had gone into heathenism ; that 
they were Avorshippers of signs and wonders. This 

„,. .. , , , , -, , ,. The sign of Jonah 

evil disposition should not be nurtured by anything 

he should do. The Messianic signs should come in their seasons, 



* The word here used signifies " adul- 
terous" when applied as usual, but 
when employed to signify things spirit- 
ual it means ' ' idolatrous. ' ' There would 
have been no point in the application of 
the former epithet to the Jews. But 
they were familiar with the idea of the 
Lord God being the husband of His 
people, and with the application of the 
words " adultery " and " whoredom " to 
idolatry, which was represented as com- 
ing from an unclean love. This proper 
translation of the word has the advan- 
tage of affording a key to the connec- 
tion of this discourse. Jesus charged 
them with being idolaters, heathen, 
because they worshipped visible things, 
such as signs. This suggested his two 
illustrations drawn from heathen na- 
tions, Ninevites and Arabians (or per- 
haps Abyssinians). 

f That is, by the Jewish reckoning. 
In the Talm. Hieros. it is written : " Day 
and night make together a space of 
time, and apart of it is as the wlwW 
That "space of time" is called in He- 
brew fijiy, which literally means an 
evening -morning . The Septuagint trans- 



lation gives yvxdri,u.epov as the equivalent. 
See Daniel viii. 14, and the same word 
used by Paul in 2 Cor. xi. 25, and trans- 
lated in the common version " a night 
and a day." From Monday afternoon to 
Wednesday morning would be repre- 
sented as three of these spaces of time, 
three wx^^P -, three evening-mornings, 
three nights and days. Olshausen makes 
the following fine remark: li The accu- 
racy of Scripture never degenerates into 
minute and anxious precision. Like 
nature, it combines regularity with free- 
dom ; and hence it affords scope to lib- 
erty, and states and fulfils all prophecies 
in such a manner that they may either 
be believed or contradicted. The Holy 
Scriptures would altogether miss their 
aim if, by mathematical precision and 
strictness, they should compel belief." 

| In the Mediterranean Sea there is 
found to this day a shark, the squalus 
carcharias, called also lamia, sometimes 
as long as sixty feet. Lange says that 
Hubner relates the instance of a sailoi 
who was swallowed by a shark and yet 
preserved. 



332 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



but sh )uld not be advanced to gratify a mere curiosity. Jonah 
was a type of the Messiah. His wonderful adventure shall be 
paralleled in the history of the Son of Man. What he meant 
must have been wholly unintelligible to all his hearers, learned 
and illiterate. Not one of his disciples understood it to intimate 
a resurrection from the dead. It was a perplexing answer. 

The mention of their idolatrous tendency, and of Nineveh, led 
him to say that Mnevite men, heathens, who were despised by 
The Nmevites and the supercilious Jews, should rise in judgment 
theQueenoftheSouth. ( or separation) against the men of the generation 
of Jesus, and condemn them ; that whenever any moral discrim- 
inations should be made, the men among the heathen who repented 
when such a man as Jonah warned them shall be considered bet- 
ter than the Jewish churchmen who heard Jesus, a greater than 
Jonah, and rejected him. He added another illustration. A 
Queen came from the South* to hear the wisdom of Solomon. 
She was " from the ends of the earth," from the people who were 
most removed from the true religion. Without invitation, against 
frightful risks, a woman was so moved with a desire to be in- 
structed in religion t that she made the long, painful, and peril- 
ous journey from barbaric regions to Jerusalem. Whenever a 
discrimination or judgment is made on moral grounds, she shall 
be declared better than the people of the Jewish church, who, pro- 
fessing to desire to know the truth, reject a teacher who had per- 
formed greater deeds and spoken greater words than Solomon 
ever did, and whom following generations would pronounce a 
man superior to great David's splendid son. 

He closed his address with a description of the condition of 
the Jewish nation, contained in a parable founded upon their 
notions in regard to demoniacal possession. This 
peroration cannot probably be rendered better 
than in the paraphrase by Professor Strong: "According to your 



The peroration. 



* From the southern portion of the 
Arabian peninsula, or from the Cushite 
kingdom of Seba in Ethiopia. Jose- 
phus {Ant., viii. 5, 5) says the latter. 
The Ethiopian (or Abyssian) church has 
a tradition to the same effect. It is not 
at all material to the argument of Jesus. 
He was contrasting the conduct of 
heathens with that of toe churchmen of 



his day, to the disparagement of the latw 
ter. 

f It is merely fair to attribute this 
motive to her, since the history which 
records her visit says, " When the Queen 
of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, 
concerning the name of Jehovah, she 
came," etc. 1 Kings x. 1. 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 333 

owr belief, a foul fiend, upon his expulsion from the possessed, 
rauges disconsolate through some barren region, in ipiest of relief 
from the anguish of guilt that torments him, by a shelter in some 
human tenement ; and to save your credit, upon the relapse of a 
demoniac whom you profess to have rendered sane, you say of 
the exorcised demon in such a case that, being unsuccessful in the 
search, he resolves to return to his late victim, and take up his 
quarters there. Be that as it may, such a fiend, if at his return 
he find that former abode untenanted by any better occupant, but 
swept clean and put in order as if for his reception ; he will then 
assuredly go forth to the general rendezvous of his comrades, and 
associate with him perhaps seven other demons, worse, it may be, 
than himself, for the secure possession of such an inviting resi- 
dence, and these all repairing thither will enter and permanently 
occupy that mansion. In the state of him whose mind is the 
theatre of such an occupancy, ' the latter evil is greater than the 
former.' Precisely such will become the condition of the aban- 
doned race who now hear me ; the incipient conviction forced 
upon them by my previous preaching and miracles, by being re- 
sisted, will but increase their guilty obduracy, which not even the 
required miracle would remove." 

As he spoke these words a woman in the crowd, an enthusias- 
tic admirer of the young Rabbi, broke out into the exclamation, 
" Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the 
breasts which thou hast sucked ! " He answered men t. WOman8 C ° mP 
this womanly but commonplace compliment by 
correcting her low ideas. " Rather are they blessed who hear 
and keep the word of God." As if he had said, " Even Mary's 
blessedness does not lie in the historic fact that I became son of 
her flesh, but that she was so humble and faithful a keeper of the 
word of God as to be selected to be my mother." Biographical 
circumstances are so little when compared with real loftiness of 
character ! 

All this while the mother and brothers of Jesus were outside 
the door, and could not reach him for the press, but sent word in 
to him. They had heard, and perhaps partly be- 

J 7 l r i «/ Mary and tier sons. 

lieved, the slanders of the Pharisees. Even Mary's 
moment of weakness was upon her. She feared. She did not 
know into what the effect of his excessive labors may have be- 
trayed him. But he was her son. When the message came to 



334 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER TN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

him through the crowd, he said : " Who is my mother ? Who are 
my brethren \ " And then, looking upon the multitude about 
him, and more particularly upon the disciples who were clinging 
more and more closely to him, and striving more and more to 
comprehend him, he said : " Behold my mother and my brothers ! 
For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, 
and sister, and mother ! " The first sentence seems a sharp 
rebuke to the weakness of Mary and the infidelity of her other 
sons in regard to this her greatest son and their glorious brother. 
The second takes them back into loving arms, if they will also 
have spiritual relationship with him. The whole sets forth a 
great advance in the teaching of Jesus. It is to be noticed that 
he claims more and more. He is looking widely through human- 
ity and into the future. He is caring less for fleshly ties. His 
love is founded on a principle. Whoever lovingly obeys God is 
a Mary that hath borne Jesus in the heart. Whoever lovingly 
obeys God is his brother: the same spirit animates both. If his 
mother do not obey God, Jesus is ready to disown the relationship. 
If the poorest woman in the world — such as the poor barbarian 
woman in Africa who gave water to Mungo Park, and sang lulla- 
bies to him in his sickness and solitude — shall only lovingly obey 
God, Jesus is ready to recognize her as sister or mother. It is a 
sublimely wide and deep saying ! 

While Jesus was making these speeches, one of the Pharisaic 
party, seeing the defeat they were suffering, invited Jesus to a 
Eats with a Pharisee, luncheon at his house, apparently that he might 
and denounces Phari- break up this public discussion and take from Jesus 
the support of the popular presence and approval, 
and surround him in private by his deadly enemies. Jesus accepted 
the invitation. Doubtless the Pharisee thought that this was done 
in rustic simplicity by an unsophisticated man. But Jesus saw 
the whole manoeuvre. He went into the house and sat down at 
the table, omitting the ceremonial washing of hands. He was 
surrounded by Pharisees, who were Separatists, Purists, Puritans, 
as their name implies. These well-washed gentlemen, with nicely 
pared finger-nails, in all things fastidiously neat, exchanged 
glances of wonder that he did not wash his hands. He saw it. 
He knew what it meant. He had been invited into a net. He 
was going to break its meshes. Just then a servant may have 
wiped the plates and cups with a clean napkin, to remove any 



THE SECOND TOTJB OF GALILEE. 



335 



little dust that may have settled on the dishes. Jesus took the 
occasion to reply in words to the accusations they were making 
by glances. " You Pharisees are now as faultless in your out- 
ward behavior as these dishes are clean of every kind of dirt ; 
but your hearts are full of extortion and wickedness. Thought- 
less men, he that makes clean that which is without, does not 
necessarily clean that which is within also ? But you give alms, 
and then say, All things are clean ! * But woe to you, Pharisees ! 
you are so careful in your tithes that you give a tenth of even 
your mint and rue and every herb,f and omit righteousness and 
the love of God : these are absolutely necessary, while your scru- 
pulousness in other things should not be omitted. Woe to you, 
Pharisees ! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and 
the greetings in the markets. "Woe to you ! for ye are as hidden 
graves which men do not see, and so walk over them and are 
ceremonially denied." 

Amongst those present was a " lawyer." When that name is 
mentioned we are not to suppose that the person occupied the 
same position in society as our modern lawyers. 
The lawyer in this case was rather a professor or 
doctor of divinity. He was an authority in sacred law. This 
person, perhaps feeling pinched by the statement about the punc- 
tilious tithing of the smallest products of the garden, a question 
the decision of which came before the lawyers, pertly addressed 
Jesus with the remark, u Teacher, saying these things thou insuhV 
est us also." 

Then Jesus broke upoik him: "And to you, professors of the 
moral law, woe ! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be 



A "lawyer.* 



* This seems to me to be the mean- 
ing of Jesus, an interpretation held by 
Erasmus, Lightfoot, Kuinoel, Schleier- 
macher, the devout Stier, and others ; 
but opposed by Dean Alford, who has 
five reasons against the correctness of 
this rendering, one of which is a strong 
reason for the interpretation here given, 
three are grammatical, one of which is 
not pertinent when we regard this as a 
dramatic sketch, and another begs the 
question. This fifth reason is, that this 
makes Jesus cast a slur upon almsgiving, 
which is a mistake ; perhaps he slurs 



such almsgiving as the Pharisees made, 
but he is not speaking of the giving oil 
alms, but of substituting outward and 
ceremonial for inward and moral clean- 
liness. The interpretation given in the 
text has this advantage, it makes sense; 
which the usual reading does not, unless 
it be the sense that he that gives alms 
is therefore inwardly pure — the very 
doctrine of the Pharisees which Jesus 
was vehemently denouncing. 

f Perhaps, by a rigid rendering of the 
passage of the law in Levit. xxvii. 30, 
the Pharisees made this precept. 



336 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



borne, and yon yourselves touch not the burdens with one of youi 

little fingers. Woe to you ! for ye build the tombs of the prophets, 

. and your fathers killed them. Truly ye are wit- 
Lawyers denounced. " «/ «/ 

nesses that you approve the deeds of your fathers : 
for they killed the prophets, and over them you erect monuments 
of your own heavy ordinances. On this account the wisdom of 
God has said : ' I will send them prophets and apostles, and some 
of them they will slay and persecute, that the blood of all the 
prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be required 
of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of 
Zacharias,* who perished between the altar and the temple : ' veri- 
ly, I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation. Woe 
to you, professors of the moral law ! for ye have taken away the 
key of knowledge ; ye entered not in yourselves, and those that 
were entering in ye hindered." 

This broke up the meal. His enemies and he rose to their 
feet. The Pharisees were furious. They might have despatched 
him there, but between the pauses of his awful 
speech they heard the surging of the great crowd 
which blocked the street outside, among whom were hundreds 
who had been wrought into an enthusiasm for the Teacher, and 
were anxious to have him make his appearance. He passed out 
from the circle of his deadly foes into the midst of the multitude. 



The meal broken op. 



* This is not so much a quotation of 
Scripture as an amplification of a say- 
ing of Scripture. The allusion seems 
to be to the account of the slaughter of 
Zacharias, the son of Jehoiada (as re- 
corded in 2 Chron. xxiv. 18-22), who 
was stoned in the court of the house 
of the Lord, because he had faith- 
fully borne witness against the sins of 
the people. As he was dying he said, 
\' The Lord look upon it, and require it." 
Jesus amplifies this expression, and 
makes the assertion that God will "re- 
quire " of the Jews of his generation the 
blood of all the holy martyrs who had 
died for confessing the truth, from Abel 
the first prophet-martyr to Zacharias 
the last martyr-prophet. He predicts 
that such obstinate and wicked rejec- 
tion of the truth by his people should 



bring upon them a destruction which 
should justify all the assertions of good 
men in regard -to the ruinous nature of 
sin, and as complete as if they had real- 
ly heard and rejected each confessor of 
the truth in every age. Matthew calls 
this Zacharias " the son of Baraehias," 
thus creating a difficulty to which two 
solutions have been offered : (1), That of 
Olshausen, who says, ' ' There is nothing 
offensive in the supposition that Mat- 
thew might have confused the name of 
the murdered man's father with the 
father of the Zacharias whose book we 
have in the canon of Scripture ; " or (2), 
Perhaps still better, that of Ebrard, who 
suggests that Zacharias might have been 
the grandson of Jehoiada, and that 
Barachias stood between. 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 



337 



He commenced to warn them against hypocrisy, against accept- 
ing hypocritical invitations to feasts, but was interrupted by a 
voice from the crowd inopportunely saying, warning against ny- 
" Teacher, speak to my brother, that he divide p 001 ^- 
the inheritance with me." This man was not a disciple, nor 
apparently about to become one, but seeing the great and grow- 
ing influence of this rabbi, he supposed that he had come to set 
all things right, and so put in his selfish appeal. Jesus turned 
upon him with the speech : " Man, who made me a judge or a 
divider over you % " He remitted him to the laws of the land. 
But it gave him occasion to deliver another warning against covet- 
ousness. " See and guard yourselves against covetousness. Not 
because a man has abundance does this life consist in his goods." 
The life comes from God. It may be sustained by a portion of 
worldly goods, but all that is over and above what a man can use 
is really useless to him. It adds nothing valuable to his life. 

This admonition is enforced by the parable of the Rich Fool, 
told very dramatically : " The large field of a rich man produced 
plentifully. And he thought within himself, parable of the Kiob 
i What shall I do % Because I have not where to FoGl - 
store my fruits.' And he said, ' This will I do : I will pull down 
my barns and build larger : and there will I gather all my pro- 
duce. And I will say to my life, ' Life, thou hast many good 
things laid up for many years: take thine ease, eat, drink, be 
merry ! ' But God said : ' Thoughtless man ! this night they * 
require of thee thy life, and to whom will belong the things 
which thou hast prepared V So is he who layeth up treasure for 
himself, and is not rich toward God." 

It would be exceedingly difficult to find another passage in the 
discourses of Jesus fuller of lessons in as few words. A man 
had become rich. He owned a great field. He 
was growing richer every day. At last he reached 
a point of perplexity. His business had grown into a very large 



Exposition. 



* It was a common belief among the 
Jews that the angels had to do with 
dying men, a belief alluded to again by 
Jesus in the parable of Dives and 
Lazarus, Luke xvi. 22. Evil men had 
their souls required of them, dragged 
out of them ; but the souls of the 
righteous were drawn from their 

22 



mouths gently with a kiss by the angel 
Gabriel. To something of this kind 
Trench thinks allusion is made in the 
formula by which the early church so 
frequently described the departure of a 
good man. " In osculo Domini obdormi- 
vit," he hath gone to sleep in the kiss of 
the Lord. 



338 SECOND AND THIED PASSOVEE IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

affair. He had reached a point when some plan for life, which 
should arrange for the disposal of all these riches, must be 
adopted. The Teacher shows us the inmost mind of the man, 
and puts his thoughts into words, and then renders the verdict of 
God upon his character and conduct. God pronounced him " a 
fool/' It is proper to learn who, in the judgment of God, is a 
fool. 

It is quite apparent that the man was not engaged in an ille- 
gitimate business, not even in one that was at all questionable. 
_- . . . . He was not a thief nor gambler, nor was he a 

Business legitimate. m ° ' 

speculative operator in stocks. He was neither 
banker nor merchant. If money has pollution in its touch, he 
avoided it. He was not exposed to the trials which beset those 
men whose business compels them to buy in the cheapest and sell 
in the dearest market. He lived in the rural districts, away from 
the metropolis ; and he was an agriculturist. If any man can 
lead a spotless life, surely a farmer can. But spotless lives are 
not more frequently led in agriculture than in other pursuits. 
Farmers are as good as others, and no better. There are farmers 
who have grumbled at the extortion of merchants, but who 
eagerly snatched at the advantage given them by a drought or a 
blockade to lock up their corn and wait for still greater advance 
in the prices. But the employment of farming is one in which a 
man is subjected to the fewest temptations. If he do wrong, 
it is because it is in him. This man was a farmer, and — a fool. 

But he was not intellectually or spiritually a fool, because he 
was rich. It is not true that " any fool can make money." It 
niches no proof of requires brains, and thought, and energy, and 
foiiy or sin. perseverance, — all these in such amount and pro- 

portion as would make the man great in any department. Nor 
does it follow that he was a sinner because he was rich. 
Ordinarily, if a man be very rich, it is because he or some ances- 
tor has done some wrong. But it is not so always. Some men 
are so wise and good that with increasing liberality they grow 
rich. Job was that perfect man who won even the admiration of 
God, and he was the richest man of his region, if not of his age. 
Abraham was the " friend of God," and he was a millionaire. 
In every age some of the saintliest have been among the most 
prosperous. Men ought not to despise or hate the rich, but pity 
them ; for with great difficulty, as Jesus says, do they enter the 



THE SECOND TOUB OF GALILEE. 339 

kingdom of heaven. And he that sets the poor against the rich, 
inciting the many against the few, appealing to the passions of 
those who have not against those who have, turning servants 
against masters, employes against employers, labor against capi- 
tal, wresting men's houses and lands and servants from them by 
preaching the crusades of agrarianism is, to speak after the man- 
ner of God, a " fool." 

This man in the parable was a farmer, was shrewd enough to 
become rich, — but he was a fool. 

This severe verdict was pronounced on his character because, 
Firstly, He could not comprehend the state of affairs which he 
himself had created. He had labored for an in- ± He did not com- 
crease, and when the increase came he was not P rehend ^ affairs - 
prepared to invest it permanently for perpetual use. When a 
man reaches a point that he begins to destroy what he has made, 
it is clear that he is not long-sighted. This man had invited 
Success to be his guest. Success came, and he did not know how 
to entertain. 

Secondly, Because he misunderstood his relation to the exter- 
nal world. He speaks like a proprietor. " /have no room where 

tO bestOW my goods." "/will pull down my 2 . Nor his relation to 

bams, and build greater, and there will I bestow the external world. 
all my goods and my fruits." Jesus represents him as a man who 
did not know how to adapt himself to the facts of God and the 
laws of the universe. A wise man acknowledges God as the 
proprietor, and himself as the agent whose business it is to im- 
prove and beautify God's world. He sees that in order to have 
his world beautified God has made this law, that the very moment 
a man begins to draw the world into himself he begins to be 
crushed out of sight. The very moment he begins to pour him- 
self out upon the world he begins to grow, and the world to 
brighten. This " fool " did not know the meaning of the words 
he was employing. Nothing is " fruit " that is not enjoyable. 
Nothing that brings troubles and perplexities should be called 
" goods." And this man had burdened himself with what he 
could not enjoy. 

Thirdly, He did not know the difference between his body and 
his soul. " The life (or soul) is more than meat." He thought 
he could feed his soul on corn ! And so he put all he had of 
capital and brain into the production of corn. " All my goods," 



34:0 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

he says. When a man has invested his " all " in perishable ob- 

3. Did no know the J ectS « and tne 7 are SWe Pt awa J> ne » totally 

difference between soul poverty-stricken. This man acknowledged that 
he had taken such a fearful risk. 
Fourthly, He had postponed his enjoyments. There is a sense 
in which the old Epicurean precept, " Carpe diem," holds good. 

4. postponed his en- If there be any real happiness to be had now, 
joyments. one g^Q^^ no f; \ e i fa s ]ip \yy postponing it to the 

uncertainties of the future. "What pleasure we have ever had we 
still have, in the knowledge and memory of it. What we have 
not we may never have. The past and the future lie equally be- 
yond our control Narrow as is the Now, it is the field for our 
action and the season for our enjoyment. It must be packed full 
and close, — pressed down with hearty effort and hearty delight. 
Many a man is like this fool in the parable. Many a man says, 
"When I have accumulated a fortune, and built a house, and 
established my family, I will settle down and have a good time." 
Why not have a good time now, while one is accumulating one's 
fortune and building one's house ? Why wait ? 

Fifthly, He relied upon a known uncertainty. All that he pro- 
jected required time, and was environed with insecurity. As the 

5. Keiied on a known timbers of the old barns were coming down, or 
uncertainty. those of the new were going up, they might fall 
on him or strike him, and thus kill him or leave him a mangled 
cripple, wretched for all life, quite beyond the anodynes that 
wealth can bring to pain. "Much goods — laid up — for many 
years." Here is a triple uncertainty. And yet on this uncertainty 
he was going to settle down at his ease, and eat and drink and be 
merry, forgetting that in eating and in drinking men sometimes 
choke or go into manifold diseases that dampen all merriment. • 

Sixthly, He omitted preparations for a future certainty. He 

could not tell when he should die, but he certainly knew that 

. whatever wealth men may accumulate they must 

6. Made no provi- *> ^ 

eion for a known cer- die. He had made no arrangement for his fortune 
tainty * when he should be dead. To whom should belong 

the things which he had prepared ? In this day it is sometimes 
announced that a man has died and " left a fortune of many mil- 
lions of dollars." He " left " it, did he % Why not stay with it 1 
What a palace, what parks, what equipages, what delicious food, 
what sumptuous furniture of books and statues and pictures and 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 341 

articles of virtu would not those millions buy ! Alas ! he conld 
not stay with it. The gate of the grave is so narrow that slender 
ghosts do barely struggle through, and houses and lands, and cof- 
fins and shrouds and bodies are all torn off, and the soul stands 
naked on the other side. And a man cannot tell to whom he 
shall leave his riches. Take what precaution he may, his will may 
be broken, after much of the estate is squandered in litigation. 
If it go to the designated heir, he may squander it on swindlers 
and harlots, or the heir may die and leave it to his father's dead- 
liest foe. It is folly to be all one's lifetime laboring to acquire a 
fortune one must leave to one knows not whom. 

" So is he that layeth np treasure for himself, and is not rich 
toward God." This is transcendent folly. The man has so buried 
himself in the perishable that when that goes he 

-,-,-, , .. -if. t . i Not rich toward God. 

is gone. He has lost nimseli in the material. 
Abstracted his inmost, highmost nature, and emptied it, as one 
should spill upon the sands of the desert his only bottle of water, 
when he knows that thence it can never be gathered up again, and 
that there is not another drop within reach. He passes into eter- 
nity with nothing, as if one should go into a foreign land, a land 
of strangers, with none of their current money, and with nothing 
that could be converted into currency. On this side rich, on that 
poor. Here the papers are full of accounts of his immense estate, 
where it lies, and how it goes, while he stands a pale aud shivering 
spirit on the inside of the gate of death, with nothing. He is not 
rich toward God, nor rich in God. He hath not used the means 
at his control to please the owner thereof, and now he comes to 
the judgment a defaulter. He had not learned the blessed alche- 
my by which Love and Faith do change the baser metals of this 
world to gold which endures forever.* 

Such seem to be the lessons of this striking parable. Jesus fol- 
lowed it with a repetition and enlargement of much that he had 
spoken against covetousness and excessive carefulness in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. 

In the crowd of hearers were some who took occasion to speak 
to him of certain Galilseans whom Pilate had one of piiate's ont- 
slain while they were engaged in worship, min- rages - 
gling their blood with their sacrifices. We cannot now ascertain 

* In this exposition I have drawn | " A Prophylactic of CovetouanessS 
largely on my published sermon entitled 



342 SECOND AND THD3D PASSOVER EN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



what was the particular atrocity to which they alluded. The Gali 
lgeans, according to Josephus,* were prone to insurrection. They 
were ignorant, rude, and tumultuous, and made frequent disturb- 
ances in Jerusalem on the occasions of the feasts. And Pilate 
not infrequently was grossly violent in the government of his peo- 
ple, f Why these informants should have brought this subject to 
the attention of Jesus at this particular time it is difficult to decide. 
Perhaps it was a challenge to him, as he was putting forth claims 
to the Messiahship, to stretch forth his arm against the Roman 
governor who had violated the Temple by the introduction of 
soldiers and by mingling human blood with the blood of sacri- 
fices. Perhaps it was a slur on Jesus as a Galilsean. Perhaps it 
intimated that he was creating trouble for the people, as these 
Galilseans had met their death as his partisans. They may have 
done so. Going up to Jerusalem to present their sacrifices, they 
may have found a test presented to them, involving the rejection 
of Jesus, or may have heard him violently denounced by the 
priests ; and although they themselves were not good, they had an 
enthusiasm for the young Pabbi, and resented the insults of the 
priests, who may have called in the aid of the governor and the 
unscrupulous Poman soldiery; or, most probably, to divert the 
searching address of Jesus from themselves, they spoke of this 
great catastrophe in reprehension of the Galilseans who had been 
slain. 

Jesus takes occasion to rebuke the spirit which was rife among 
the Jews, and which can be found in this day, leading men to 
adjudge the unfortunate as wicked, and to regard 
singular catastrophes as proofs of singular crim- 
inality. " Suppose you that these Galilaeans were sinners above 
all the Galilseans, because they have suffered such things ? I tell 
you, No ; but except you repent, you shall all perish in like man- 
ner.;): Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower of Siloam§ fell 



A false judgment. 



* Vit., 17, and Antiq., 17, 9, 3 ; 10, 2. 

j See Josephus, Antiq. , 18, 3, 1 ; Be 
Bell. Jud. , 2, 9, 2 ; also Winer, the arti- 
cle Pilate. 

% " Likewise " does not translate the 
word. It means that their punishment 
should be of the same kind as that of 
those who had been spoken of. 

§ History has preserved no record of 



the incident here mentioned. Winer 
refers to Josephus, Bell. Jud., 6, 7, 2, 
from which passage it would seem that 
the lower town extended as far as 
this district of Siloam, which Josephus* 
distinguishes from a well of the same 
name, and that the district was enclosed 
by the city walls. 



THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE. 



343 



and killed them, think ye that they were sinners above all men 
who dwelt in Jerusalem % I tell yon, No ; bnt except you repent, 
you shall all (Galilseans and Judseans) perish in like manner." 
He taught that these unfortunates who fell by Pilate's hand were 
not therefore to be accounted worse than their countrymen ; nor 
the Galilseans in geneial to be disparaged on this account, for in 
Judsea, nay, in Jerusalem itself, a tower had fallen upon eighteen 
people who were not Galilseans, and they perished ; but they were 
not therefore to be accounted worse than other Judseans. 

He then gave his discourse a turn which his hearers little ex- 
pected. He led them from thinking of others to think of them- 
selves. Repentance and not judgment was the Eepentance, not 
proper occupation of their lives. Unless the J ud sm ent - 
whole people of the Jews repented, the nation should be slain 
and crushed out. God's hand flings down Siloam-towers and un- 
sheathes Pilate-swords, and these are but types of what He will 
do to the whole nation, if they do not repent. This was a predic- 
tion which was literally fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem, 
when multitudes of the inhabitants were crushed beneath the 
ruins of the Temple and the city, and multitudes, while engaged 
in offering their sacrifices, were slain by the Poman army. 

The forbearance and the justice of God towards the Jewish 
nation are then set forth in a warning parable. "A certain one 
had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard, and he came 
seeking fruit on it, and did not find it. Then he 
said to his vine-dresser, ' See, three years * I come seeking fruit 
on this fig-tree, and I do not find. Cut it down : why does it also \ 



* It may be instructive to the reader 
to see a statement of the fantastic deal- 
ings with the words of Jesus by com- 
mentators. Take the ''three years" 
which are named in this passage. Au- 
gustine understands them to mean 
the law of nature and the written law 
and the law of grace ! Theophylact in- 
terprets them to signify Moses and the 
prophets and Christ ; and also, when ap- 
plied to the individual under moral cul- 
ture, childhood and manhood and old 
age. Olshausen, the three years of the 
ministry of Jesus. Whereas the plain 
meaning is simply the space required for 



the bearing of fruit. His hearers could 
not possibly have understood anything 
else, nor could others, except as they 
set themselves to exercise their inge- 
nuity and to make "heads" for a ser- 
mon. 

f The whole force of the most impor- 
tant word in the sentence is lost in the 
common version. ' ' In addition to occu- 
pying space, it exhausts the ground." 
Why should it ? That is the real mean- 
ing of the text, which, in our transla- 
tion above, is sought to be brought out 
suggestively by the world " also." 



344 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 



injure the ground ? ' But the vine-dresser replied, ' Master, let il 
alone this year also, until I shall dig and cast manure about it ; 
and then, if it produce fruit, — but if not, then thou shalt cut it 
down." * 

It was a plain and pungent lesson. The fig-tree was the Jew- 
ish people, who had received all kinds of protection and culture 
from God, who had been expected to bear fruit for the good of 
the world, who had had time granted for that purpose, but who 
had not only been barren, but had kept the world back in the 
growth of improvement. It was like a tree drawing from the 
ground the nourishment which, if other trees had, they would 
produce fruit. It must be cut down. But a merciful space is 
left. If it begin to be productive, it shall be spared ; if not, it 
shall be cut out from among all the trees of the nations which 
God has planted in the field of the world. His hearers certainly 
must have understood this to be a prediction of the destruction 
of their hierarchy and nationality. The construction of the par- 
able, and the connection in which it is uttered, showed them that 
this was the meaning of Jesus. And he meant nothing else. 



* The following" receipt for curing- a 
fig-tree of barrenness is quoted from 
Rosenmiiller (Alte und Neue Morgen- 
land, v. 5, p. 187) : " Thou must take 
a hatchet and go to the tree with a 
friend, unto whom thou sayest, I will 
cut down this tree, for it is unfruitful. 
He answers, Do not so, this year it will 
certainly bear fruit. But the other 
says, It must needs be, it must be hewn 



down, and gives the stem of the tree 
three blows with the back of the hatchet. 
But the other restrains him, crying, Nay, 
do it not ; thou wilt certainly have fruit 
from it this year ; only have patience 
with it, and be not over-hasty in cutting 
it down ; if it still refuses to bear fruit, 
then cut it down. Then will the tree 
that year be certainly fruitful and bear 
abundantly." 



CHAPTER VII 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 



In the course of the afternoon of the same day Jesns left hi 3 
residence in Capernaum and went to the shore of the lake of 
Gennesaret. His appearance in public would Lake Gennesaret, 
now immediately summon a congregation. To °^ Capernaum. Matu 

J & o jnu. j Mark iv. ; Luke 

the multitudes that had assembled from all the vm. 
neighboring towns and cities, he presented his doctrines in the 
form of parables, delivered while he sat in a boat near the shore. 

It is to be noticed that Jesus was more liberal of this kind of 
teaching at this period of his ministry than ever before. In the 
next chapter we shall have occasion to consider the motive. We are 
following the order of the original historians as far as practicable. 

The first in order and in importance is the Parable of the 
Sower. Jesus considered it the fundamental parable. When his 
disciples questioned him privately as to its signifi- 

1 . 1 .. „„ r . / ,,.«■%* Parable of the Sower. 

cance, he said, " Know ye not this parable s How 
then will ye know all parables ? " (Mark iv. 13.) And this is 
that parable : " Behold the sower went forth to sow ; and in his 
sowing some seeds fell by the wayside, and were trodden down, 
and the birds came and devoured them. And others fell upon 
stony places, where they had not much earth, and immediately 
sprang up, because they had no depth of earth ; but the sun having 
risen * they were scorched, and because they had no root they with- 
ered away. And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns 
grew up and choked them, and they yielded no fruit. And others 
fell on good ground, and gave fruit, some an hundred-fold, some 
sixty-fold, some thirty-fold. He who hath ears let him hear." 



* " There is a peculiar beauty in the 
Greek here, which cannot be retained 
in a translation, arising from the use of 
the same verb (but in a less emphatic 
form) to signify the rising of the plant 



and of the sun, as both are said in Eng- 
lish to be up, when one is above the 
surface of the earth and the other above 
the horizon." — Jos. Addison Alexander 



346 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



Of the Tares. 



The next parable is that of the Tares. He said to them, " The 
kingdom of the heavens was likened to a man who sowed good 
seed in his field, but while men slept* his 
enemy came and oversowed tares f in the midst 
of the wheat, and went away. And when the blade sprang up 
and made fruit, then appeared also the tares. And the slaves of 
the master of the house coming said to him : 6 Sir, didst thou not 
sow good seed in thy field ? Whence then has it tares ? ' He said 
to them, 6 An enemy man has done this.' And the slaves said 
to him, i Wilt thou then that we go and gather them % ' But he 
said, ' No : lest gathering together the tares ye root up the wheat 
with them. Permit both to grow together until the harvest ; and 
in time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather first the tares, 
and bind them in bundles for to burn them : but the wheat gather 
into my barn.' " 

And he said, " So is the kingdom of God, like as if a man 
should cast the seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise 
night and day, and the seed should spring and 
grow up, he knoweth not how. The earth bring- 
ing forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the ear, after that 
the full corn in the ear : but when the fruit is ripe, immediately 
he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest has come." 

Then he set before them the Parable of the Mustard-seed. 
" The kingdom of the heavens is like a grain of mustard,;): which 
a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed 
is the least of all the seeds, but when grown it is 
the greatest of the herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of 
heaven come and roost in its branches and under the shadow 
thereof." 

Then another parable. " The kingdom of the heavens is like 



Of the Patient Farmer. 



Of the Mustard-seed. 



* Simply signifying " at night," — the 
time when men usually sleep, — and not 
at all intimating any blame of the ser- 
vants, as Chrysostom and Augustine have 
taught. 

f The botanical question is a matter 
of no importance whatever in the inter- 
pretation of a parable. The tares here 
are probably the Lolium temulentum, 
darnel, which resembles wheat when 
it first comes, but the seed is black and 
has an intoxicating effect. It is exceed- 



ingly difficult to extirpate it when it has 
once begun to grow in a field, and it is 
almost impossible to discriminate be- 
tween tares and wheat. See a very full 
description (with pictorial illustration) 
in Thompson's Land and Book, vol. ii. 
pp. 111-114. 

% Another botanical question, not very 
important in a parable. Of all the seed 
corn used in Jewish husbandry the mus- 
tard-seed was probably the very small 
est. 




A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 



U] 



yeast, * which a woman having taken hid in three measures f of 



meal, until the whole was leavened." 



Of Leaven. 



When he left the lake and retired to his house 
his disciples sought him, and asked the reason for the great change 
which was now coming over his manner of dis- 
course. They could not have failed to notice ^f Je ^ s spoke ta 

«/ parables. 

that thitherto he had spoken with great direct- 
ness, in a didactic style, when he wished to teach doctrine or incul- 
cate duty, and that when his enemies sought to entrap him he 
had dealt with them in questions which greatly entangled them. 
Now he was filling his speech with parables. There must be 
some reason for this great change. So they put the question to 
him directly: "Why speakest thou unto them in parables?" 
His answer was this : " Because it has been given to you to know 
the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it has 
not been given. For whosoever has, to him shall be given, and 
he shall have abundance : but whosoever has not, from him shall 
be taken even what he hath. On this account I speak to them in 
parables : because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not 
hear, nor understand. And to them is fulfilled the prophecy of 
Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not un- 
derstand : and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive : for the 
heart of this people is become gross, and they heard with their 
ears heavily, and their eyes they closed ; lest they should see with 
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their 



* In the Greek ^tj, leaven or yeast, 
the sour dough used in all countries to 
produce fermentation, and thus make 
the bread light and puffy. 

f This measure, called 'Sarov, saton, 
in the Greek, was, according to Josephus, 
equal to one and a half Soman meas- 
ures, each of which was equal to about 
a peck, so that all this meal was perhaps 
(for there is no absolute certainty as to 
these ancient measures) about an Eng- 
lish bushel. But it makes little differ- 
ence whether the Roman modius was 
nearer our peck than our bushel, no 
definite quantity being intended. So 
the number three can be of no import- 
ance in a parable, and yet the student 



may be amused to hear the fantasies it 
has suggested to worthy and learned 
men. Theodore of Mopsuestia, in the 
fifth century, referred it to the Jews, 
the Samaritans, and the Greeks. Au- 
gustine in the fourth century, and Stier 
of the present day, refer it to Shem, 
Ham, and Japheth ! Olshausen favors 
a reference of this particular number to 
the effect of the gospel on the three 
departments of human nature— body, 
soul, and spirit. This special number 
was used probably because it was com- 
mon to mix about that much dough fot 
a baking. See Gen. xviii. G ; Judges vi 
19 ; 1 Samuel i. 24. In the last two 
passages the Septuagint has -fia iktoh. 



348 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESTJS. 

heart, and might turn, and I should heal them. But blessed arc 
your eyes, for they see : and your ears, for they hear. Verily I 
say to you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired 
to see what ye see, and have not seen ; and to hear what ye hear, 
and have not heard." 

All this seems simply to mean that whenever any man uses his 

faculties aright and cultivates his moral character, he shall have 

constant growth and spiritual help, and that who- 

Meaning of his reply. ° 1 i • ■ i f 

soever chooses to shut himself up against the 
truth shall constantly shrink. God gives to those who desire to 
have, whatever may have been their personal faults, and withholds 
from all others. These humble disciples lay with their souls 
to the sun, and consequently had its warming and brightening in- 
fluence. The " mysteries of the kingdom," what appeared mys- 
terious to others, began to become comprehensible to them. The 
Jewish people could not understand the present revelation, because 
they had closed their ears to former revelations. Jesus felt the 
truth that was in him, and set it forth in such a style that, if their 
souls would, they could receive the truth ; but if they preferred 
darkness the parable would be unintelligible. The parable covers 
and discovers, conceals and reveals. It is the temper and previ- 
ous culture of the hearer which determine the effect of the speech, 
whether he listen to Jesus or any other teacher. The power of 
closing the ears while one seems to hear is well known. If this 
be practised toward the truth, a man may come into such a state 
that when he desires to know and understand he cannot. In that 
case the fault is not in the truth nor in the teacher : a law of 
human nature has been violated. 

There are special seasons of great advantage to the hearer, as 
when a peculiarly gifted teacher comes into the world or into a 
community. It is a blessed thing for any man to be in a recep- 
tive condition at such a time. Many an ancient prophet, saint, 
and prince had longed to know what those who listened to Jesus 
could learn. Blessed were the men who were ready to hear when 
Jesus began to speak. In saying so, Jesus assumed to be able to 
make revelation of great truths ; to be, indeed, such a teacher as 
these prophets and kings had longed to hear, surpassing, in a 
word, all former teachers of mankind. 

He then began to unfold the parables in a style which should 
be a guide to all succeeding commentators, presenting the essence 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES 



349 



of doctrine contained in the parable, and intended to be taught 
by it, without those conceits where, with a lively fancy, one may 
embroider a solid thought. * 

In the Parable of the Sower, the seed represents the word of 
God, and the places where it fell the condition of the several por- 
tions of the human race, and the several kinds of 
human character upon which this seed falls, for Pa ^^!f the &L^* 
humanity is God's wide field of husbandry. The 
word or truth of God is like seed in that it grows when planted, 
and that it is of its nature to grow when put into the human 
heart, if that heart be kindly turned toward the truth. Moreover, 
it produces the bread of the soul, and is self-propagative. It has 
been observed in this parable that the seed represents at one time 
the word of God, and at another the heart of man. But no one 
has ever been perplexed by this free motion of thought and 
speech. The illustrations are as clear as if every rule of the most 
artificial rhetoric had been observed, while Jesus used " that dis- 
cretionary license which distinguishes original and independent 
thinkers from the mere grammarians and rhetoricians." 

And perhaps this matchless Teacher had a meaning in the very 
change from seed to soil. The loss of the seed is the loss of the 
soil, as the good seed on good soil becomes incorporated therewith. 
A man who loses the truth loses himself ; he who receives the 
truth enriches his own personality. 

The difference in the reception by different classes of hearers 
is thus explained : — 

(1.) The wayside hearers are those who hear the word of the 
kingdom so far as outward reception of the mere word is con- 
cerned, the mere listening to the statement of propositions, with- 
out an active apprehension and personal application. The word 
lies on their souls as seed does on a paved and much- trodden 
road. It is there : but it has not entered. It has not been 
received. The hungry mouth of the ploughed furrow is not 



* Of which a specimen is Lange's in- 
terpretation of the parable of the sower, 
when he says that the stony ground is 
exhibited in "corrupted Judaism; the 
ground where the good seed is choked 
by thorns of worldly lust is the Moham- 
medan world ; the good ground is Chris- 
tendom!" {Life of Jesus, vol ii., p. 



194. ) Really the common justice which 
allows an intelligent man to know what 
he meant to say, ought to be accorded 
to Jesus. After he has given his own 
interpretation of one of his own para- 
bles, surely it is most unfair to repre- 
sent him as meaning something else 
thereby. 



350 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LD7E OF JESUS. 

there to take it in, nor is the harrow ready to put it under. It is 
obvious to the eyes of the birds, who see it and take it off. The 
Evil One does that for the way- side hearers of the truths of " the 
kingdom " which Jesus was preaching. The grammatical con- 
struction of the sentence shows that this loss of the word occurs 
" almost during the act of hearing." 

(2.) " But what was sown among the stones, this is he who heareth 
the word, and immediately with joy receiveth it ; yet hath he no 
root in himself, but is for a time, temporary ; and when tribula- 
lation or pursuit ariseth because of the word, immediately he is 
caused to stumble." Here is a different class of hearers. They 
not only listen to the word, and receive it into their ears, but they 
have joyful emotions. They receive it enthusiastically. But so 
soon as a severe trial of their faith comes, they fall away from 
the gospel. They have not root. They have not taken it into 
their souls and made it part of their lives. They love the truth 
only so long as the truth is to them an occasion of pleasurable 
emotions. In other words, they love pleasure more than they 
love truth, and when pressure or pursuit, tribulation or persecu- 
tion, presents to them for immediate decision the choice between 
pleasure and truth, their decision shows how little root the truth 
had been able to strike in their souls. 

(3.) " And what was sown among the thorns, this is he who 
heareth the word, and the anxious care of the world and the de- 
ceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becometh unfruit- 
ful." Here is another mixture of the sign and the thing signified, 
making " the word " mean in the same breath both seed and soil ; 
but the sense is very open. While in the second case the rootless- 
ness of the man, or the rootlessness of the word in the man, is 
demonstrated by what comes to him, here the same thing is de- 
monstrated by what the man himself pursues. In the former 
case, if no tribulation or persecution had come, the man would 
have gone on quite happy, but here his course of daily life shows 
how little the truth has dominion over his soul. Anxious care, 
an elevation of the present over the future, a preference for tem- 
porary visible things rather than for permanent, eternal, invisible 
things, and then the deceitfulness of wealth, luring men to its 
pursuit by promises of enjoyments it never affords — these spring 
up about the word, and the truth fails to have the happy effect 
upon the character of the hearer which it would otherwise have. 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 



351 



(4.) " But what was sown on the good ground, this is he who 
heareth and understandeth the word, who indeed beareth fruit, 
some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty." That which " was 
sown on good ground," so says the original. The way-side, the 
stony places, the thorny places, are all bad for the seed. " Ground,' 1 
with nothing else, is " good." A soul without prepossessions and 
anxious cares, lying ready for the truth, is the soil in which this 
seed will grow. That is the reason why childlikeness and sim- 
plicity of spirit, with desire for the truth, are so much commended 
by Jesus, and have in all ages been favorable to the cultivation 
of the character and the acquisition of true wisdom. In such a 
man plant the truth, and it will certainly be fruitful. But as in 
evil hearers there are three classes, so the Teacher instructs us 
that there will be varieties of good bearers, but that this variety 
will be rather in degree than in kind. Some will be more fruit- 
ful than others, but all will bear fruit, not perhaps in exact arith- 
metically expressed ratios, but certainly in a proportional diversity. 

Then followed his own exposition of the Parable of the Tares. 
" He who soweth the good seed is the Sou of Man. The field is 
the world. The good seed, these are the sons of 
the kingdom. The tares are the sons of the Evil Ta ^ pUcatiou ° f ** 
One. The enemy that sowed them is the Devil. 
The harvest is the end of the age. The reapers are the angels. 
As therefore the tares are assorted and burned in the fire, so shall 
it be at the end of this age ; the Son of Man shall send angels, 
and they shall gather out of his kingdom all who are snares,* 
and those who make lawlessness, and shall cast them into a fur- 
nace of fire : there shall be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then 
the righteous shall shine out as the sun in the kingdom of their 
Father. He that has ears to hear, let him hear ! " 

It would seem impossible to make anything clearer than this, 
and yet it is a remarkable fact in the history of human thought 
that there is only one other speech of Jesus which has caused so 
much perplexity to the church as this.f A volume as large as 



* The word translated " all things 
that offend," means that portion of a 
trap where the bait is suspended, which, 
being touched, causes the snare to spring 
and tighten on the unfortunate animal. 
As the word in the original, although 



neuter, manifestly refers to persons, the 
translation I have given above seems to 
be not only literal, but exactly expres- 
sive of the idea intended. 

f I refer to his words at the Supper : 
" This is my body j " " this is my blood," 



352 



SECOND AND THTRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



this might be filled with a history of controversies fought around 
this parable and its explanation by Jesus. The most perverse and 
foolish and ruinous interpretations have been given, mainly grow- 
ing out of the interpretation of the phrase " the world," which 
men insist to this day in making to mean " the church." They 
will not let Jesus know what he meant when he spake. Will the 
reader be good enough to refer to the parable, and immediately 
after reading it read the exposition of Jesus, and then follow with 
the next paragraph ? In that we shall present what seems to us 
would be the understanding of an intelligent man who had com- 
pared the sayings of Jesus with one another, without any prepos- 
session of interpretation. 

Jesus says : " The seed is the word of God." (Luke viii. 11.) 
He represents himself as being the Sower, by which he would 
seem to mean that in some way, excelling all others, he should 
apply the word of God to the minds and hearts of mankind. He 
describes himself by his favorite name, " Son of Man." " The 
field is the world" not the church. The field is the whole commu- 
nity of human beings occupying this planet, in successive genera- 
tions, with their various pursuits and developments. " The king- 
dom of the heavens is like unto a man who sowed good seed in 
his field." " The field is the world" " The good seed are the 
sons of the kingdom " of the heavens. " The tares are the chil- 
dren of the Devil," whose personality and activity Jesus taught 
not in parable, but in most strictly didactic and expository dis- 
courses to his disciples in private, and in explication of a parable. 
The " Devil," the accuser, the slanderer, is the enemy of the Son 
of Man. He has sown evil in the world, not specially in the 
church. Because the church must be part of the world, it will 
have the characteristics of the world in the particular of a mixed 
population. " The harvest is the end of the age." 

In our common version of Matthew xiii. we have in the thirty- 
eighth verse, " The field is the world" and in the thirty-ninth verse, 
" The harvest is the end of the world" The words in the original 
are totally different. In the former passage it means this orderly 
universe of God, and the human race occupying this planet. In 
the latter it means won, age, sera. The whole phrase* means the 



*■ The phrase here is ffvrjTeKeta rov 
auovos. In Hebrews ix. 26, Paul uses 
the phrase, cwreXeia rwv atdviav, the 



juncture of the ages, the moment of 
passage from one sera to another. 
Trench thinks " the phrase equivalent 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 353 

coming together of seras, the joining of their ends, the conclud- 
ing end of one and the opening end of the other. 

In this phrase there is nothing whatever which implies or in- 
sinuates the destruction or end of either this planet or its inhab- 
itants. There is very plainly indicated a great transition epoch, 
when one cycle ends and another begins, and this juncture of 
the seras is marked by an epoch of vast changes in the constitu- 
tion of tilings. It will be the harvest-home of the kingdom of 
the heavens. Until that time no man, and no set of men, must 
undertake the weeding process to cast the evil out. It cannot be 
done. " Lest gathering together the tares ye root out the wheat 
with them." Obviously Jesus believed that the world was not 
so much hurt by the existence of evil men as it was benefited by 
the existence of the good. It is better to permit an evil man to 
reside in a community, a church, a society, a town, than by mis- 
take to destroy a good man. The faith of Jesus in the goodness 
of goodness is both beautiful and sublime. It rested upon an- 
other thought. The evil is to be destroyed at the end of this 
aeon and the beginning of the next, whenever that shall be. The 
destiny of the evil is to be destroyed. The destiny of the good 
is to be preserved. 

At the conjunction of the ages the Son of Man will send his 
reapers forth officially, and he will direct them what to do. Here 
Jesus assumes to himself the final supervision, and accomplish- 
ment by the agency of angels, of the destiny of the evil and the 
good. He will direct what shall be done with them. 

The evil are to be dealt with first. Wherever in any part of 
his kingdom, — " the kingdom of the heavens," — there are any 
who are baits to others, enticing them to evil, or any who make 
lawlessness, teach or practise disregard of the laws of the king- 
dom of the heavens, they are to be separated from all the good. 
That is the first process. Then these evils and these evil people 
will be assorted. All shall not be destroyed alike. Every man 
is to be judged and punished " according to his works." There 
are " few stripes " and " many stripes." There is discrimina- 
tion and assortment. " Bind them in bundles for their burning." 
Augustine sees this, and teaches that sinners shall be punished 
together. " Hoc est, rapaces cum rapacibus, adulteros cum adul- 

to the T6\rj tuv aiuvwv of 1 Cor. x. 11, the I the one and the commencement of the 

other." 

23 



354 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEK m THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



teris, homicidses cum homocidis, fures cum furibus, derisorea 
cum derisoribus, similes cum similibus ; " that is, robbers with 
robbers, adulterers with adulterers, murderers with murderers, 
thieves with thieves, scorners with scorners, like with like.** Then 
these bundles are to be thrown into a furnace of fire. The weak 
shall burst into wailing, and the fierce wicked ones shall gnash 
their teeth in rage ; but they shall be destroyed. This intimates 
the most fearful anguish in the process of destruction. Then, 
when whatsoever and whosoever offends, or causes to offend, shall 
have been destroyed, — shall have been rolled away like a dark 
cloud, — the righteous shall blaze forth gloriously in the kingdom 
of their Father. Until which time let no man undertake the 
work of excision and destruction. It is the prerogative of the 
Son of Man, and shall be accomplished at the juncture of the 
seras, when " this age " shall end and " the age to come " begin. 
And yet, with such plain teaching set before the world by Jesus, 
and in face of the corroboration, by the history of the whole 
world, of the utter impracticability of infallible judgment as to 
the character of men, some called Christians have insisted upon 
persecution for opinion's sake, making a man an offender for a 
word, until at some period of the church's history ecclesiastics 
have become morbid heresy-hunters. For instance, Aquinas, who 
in the thirteenth century won the name of the Angelic Doctor, 
taught that the prohibition is binding only when there is danger 
of plucking up the wheat while extirpating the tares, as if Jesus 
had not expressly taught that that danger is always and will be, 
while this sera lasts. John Maldonatus, a Spanish Jesuit of the 
sixteenth century, taught that the householder was to determine 
whether such danger existed, and he added, that as the Pope is 
the representative of that householder, he must be asked whether 
or not the tares shall be removed. Upon which he addresses to 
all Catholic princes an exhortation to imitate these slaves of the 
householder, so that instead of having to be urged to the work of 
footing out heresies and heretics, they will rather need to have 



* Dante, "the dark Italian hiero- 
phant," represents that among other 
spectacles in hell he saw one moving 
flame, divided at the top, and was told 
that it contained Diomed and Ulysses, 
** who speed together now to their own 



misery, as formerly they used to do to 
that of others." The Old Testament 
Scriptures give this intimation repeat- 
edly. " That man perished not alone in 
his iniquity." ' ' The deceiver and the 
deceived are His." Job xii. 16. 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 355 

their s,eal restrained ! So totally has what is called " The Church" 
misrepresented the teaching of Jesus. 

Having now the invaluable help of the Great Teacher's method 
of explaining his own parables, let us apply it to all that follows. 

The next is the Parable of the Seed growing in secret. In that 
the commentators have found great difficulties. They say that if 
the man who sows the seed is Jesus, then the par- Explication of the 
able seems to disparage him, — " something is at- Patient Husbandman. 
tributed to him which seems unworthy of him, less than to him 
rightly appertains, — while if, on the other hand, we take him to 
mean those that in subordination to himself are bearers of his 
word, then something more, a higher prerogative, as it would 
seem, is attributed than can be admitted to belong rightly to any 
save only to him." * Another f says that this parable " is another 
and imperfect version of that of the tares, only with the circum- 
stance of the tares left out ! " As to the first, the question is set- 
tled. Jesus says that he is the Sower. If that distinct declara- 
tion of his cannot be made to consort with Iris pictorial represen- 
tations of truth, it cannot be helped by even an archbishop. He 
was not careful to preserve the unities, and a German doctor 
must bear it. He spoke with the freedom of a soul too large for 
mere rhetorical rules. Why should commentators be so careful 
for the reputation of Jesus ? As to the second, the slightest ex- 
amination would have shown the learned author that this is an- 
other version of the parable of the tares, as Othello is another 
version of Hamlet, when, of course, " the circumstance " of Ham- 
let is " left out." That of the tares teaches one thing, this an- 
other. 

This parable sets forth that the seed of the kingdom, the word 
of God, the germ of truth, is under the great system of law per- 
vading the universe. The truth grows of itself. All a man can 
do is to plant it. He need have no worry, no excessive anxiety. 
It will grow. The Son of Man, Jesus, has cast seed into the 
ground, and whatever he may know of all the secret processes of 
nature beyond what men know, the seed he plants can grow no 
otherwise than, and will certainly grow just as, the seed of the 
most unlearned farmer grows. That is to say, it is part of the 
universal plan, and obeys the universal law. Jesus does not pro- 

* Trench, in his treatise on the Para- I f Strauss, Leben J'esu, voL L, jw 
bles. I 664. 



356 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

fess to give his words an unnatural element. He will wait. The 
seed of God will surely grow day and night. Every part of its 
development is beautiful in its season, the blade, the ear, and the 
full corn at last. It is an impressive lesson of faith and patience. 
Then we have the Parable of the Mustard-seed. We need no 
fanciful interpretation of this parable. It plainly means the ex- 
Expikation of the tensive growth of the principles of the kingdom 
Mustard-seed. £ ^ e neavens f r0 m the small beginnings of the 

obscure life of Jesus. He professed to plant that little seed in 
the field of the world. The planting took place in one of the 
most obscure corners of the field. It consisted of some spoken, 
not written, words, uttered to a few ordinary people, and coming 
out of a life of moderate length, only one-eleventh of which was 
spent in public. He had such faith in the power of his own 
words that he predicted the time when they should be so exten- 
sive in their influence that the utterances of no other man should 
be as potential. And that prediction is this day fulfilled. The 
parable and its fulfilment shows what prodigious results God ac- 
complishes with what apparently slender resources. 

From setting forth the extensive growth of the kingdom of the 
heavens by the propagation of truth, Jesus proceeds to conclude 

this series of parables by teaching the intensive 
Lea^ iCati ° n ° f ^ g^wth of truth. This kingdom is like hidden 

leaven. It is a small body when compared with 
the three measures of meal, but it is more than a match for the 
mass of inert substance in which it is hidden. The meal has no 
effect on the leaven. The leaven instantly attacks the meal. It is 
a vivid, restless, transforming agency. It seizes the particles of 
meal next to it and changes them to leaven. It converts the use- 
less into an ally. There is now more leaven and less unleavened 
meal. This process goes forward until the whole mass is leavened. 
It is a noiseless process. No one sees it, no one hears it ; but just 
as certainly as if the work were performed in the sight of all men, 
and with blare of trumpets, the great change goes steadily forward. 
Placed in contact with humanity, the truths of the kingdom will 
go forward changing that humanity by a potency peculiar to itself. 
It will cover humanity and take the whole world, not by over- 
powering, or conquering, or subjugation, but by transforming the 
world, and converting the mass of inert humanity into a vigorous 
agency. 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 357 

Thus did Jesus set forth his ideas of the nature of the kingdom 
of the heavens when addressing multitudes, and thus did he ex 
plain his teaching: to his disciples in private when 

\ , & ,. f i ♦ i t • Similitudes. 

they sought an explication 01 his dark sayings. 
And teaching his immediate followers he adds these other para- 
bles, or " similitudes," as Origen says they should be called. (1) 
" The kingdom of the heavens is like to a treasure hidden in the 
field, which a man having found he hid, and from the joy of it 
goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field." (2) 
" Again the kingdom of the heavens is like to a merchant seeking 

Oct o 

good pearls, and having found one pearl of great value, he went 
and sold all that he had and bought it." (3) "Again the king- 
dom of the heavens is like to a drag-net, cast into the sea, and 
gathering of every kind, which when it was full they drew upon 
the shore, and having sat down, they gathered the good into ves- 
sels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be in the end of the age : 
the angels shall come forth and separate the bad from the midst 
of the righteous, and shall cast them into the furnance of fire. 
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

After the method of Jesus in explaining his parables, it would 
seem that these similitudes should contain no difficulties. And 
they do not, to simple minds. There is not a particle of difficulty 
except to such as have the old barren idea of churchism, to which 
all things must bend. Jesus is talking about something much 
higher and deeper than church ; he is talking about the kingdom 
of all ages and all heavens. He presents it again in three ways. 

1. In the Parable of the Treasure, it is as if a man walking 
over the field, which may seem to him barren and worthless, all 
at once comes unexpectedly upon a treasure, which 
so enhances the value of the field that everything FI ^ TreMnie to th8 
else in comparison with it seems worthless. " The 
field is the world." The kingdom of the heavens is the treasure. 
It is this which makes the world so valuable. It is in the world. 
Men do not see it. They are like unlettered rustics who walk 
over a field and perceive nothing. The chemist, the botanist, the 
geologist, the mining engineer, come into the same field, and they 
see a thousand beautiful and valuable things ; and the geologist 
and engineer perceive traces of coal or copper, or silver or gold, 
exhibitions or pr/ ^mises of riches such as Australia and California 
never presented. How rapidly the field appreciates ! Just so is 



358 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

it often with men who, not expecting it, have such a sudden re> - 
elation of the glory of the reign of God in the world. Then the 
world becomes vastly precious to them. 

The basis of this parable was a fact common to society in the 
East, not only in the days of Jesus, but in this day. Curious ex- 
plorers of oriental ruins have obstructions in their work created 
by the belief of the natives that they come to carry away vast 
treasures from the country, the existence of which had somehow 
become known to these travellers. In ancient times, when there 
were rapid changes of dynasties, men adopted methods of invest- 
ment unknown to modern times. It is said that they divided 
their estates into three parts, one of which was put into commerce 
for current use ; another converted into costly articles, which were 
easily portable and salable in all countries, so that, if obliged to 
fly, these would be their means of support ; and the third they 
buried, so that if they returned to their own land they might find 
their riches again. As in the changes of this mortal life many a 
man did not return, there were frequent occasions when treasure 
would be found. Idling peasants often sighed for the discovery 
of great riches, and so many romantic incidents would r^cessarily 
be connected with the burying and the finding of these Measures, 
that they occupy no inconsiderable space in oriental literature. 

Jesus meant to teach, (1) That the reign of changeless principles 
occupying God's universe and pervading God's eternity is incom- 
parably valuable. (2) That its existence is what gives va'ue to 
the world, which would otherwise be worthless. (3) That men 
sometimes have these great truths revealed to them as by an 
inspiration, and all true men are excited with gladness thereat. 

2. But there are men who are seeking the valuable, the most 

precious, and they find it in this kingdom. This truth is set f o* th 

in the Parable of the Pearl-buyer. It is necessary 

The Pearl-buyer. . ^ . ' . ' ' • 

to recollect the great esteem m which the ancients 
held the pearl, and the great sums often given for a single perfect 
pearl. The two pearls which Cleopatra proposed to dissolve in 
acid, in honor of Mark Anthony, were valued at 10,000,000 ses- 
terces, or about $390,000 in gold. But the value depended upon 
several things, such as size, form, color, and purity of lustre. It 
was rare to find a pearl that united all the good qualities, and 
when found it was of great price, of so great price as to stimulate 
elaborate counterfeiting. It was worth while sometimes to invest 



A CHAPTER OF PARABLES. 359 

all one possessed in a single pearl. There was less fluctuation in 
its value than in that of other commodities in the world's markets. 
So Jesus likens the earnest truth-seeker to the pearl-merchant. 
He finds the most costly truth in the kingdom which Jesus was 
preaching. As men come to see and know the value of these 
truths, all other things will become comparatively valueless. They 
will seek this. They will give up everything else for this. The 
possession of this truth is the gaining of an everlasting fortune. 

3. Again, this kingdom is likened unto a drag-net. Such a net 
is loaded with lead at the bottom, to sink it into the sea, and fur- 
nished with cork at the top, which floats it, and- 

, ' • i r i -i^ -i • i The Drag-net. 

then carried rar out, as on the Jinglish coast some- 
times half a mile, and brought round with a sweep that takes all 
in and pulls all to the shore. Such a drag-net is the kingdom 
of the heavens, not the church. It sweeps the sea of life. It 
gathers in all the good fish and all the bad. It *might be likened 
to the sea itself, but that Jesus desired to convey again a very 
deep, important lesson of this kingdom, namely, that at the end of 
the current age, at the period when this cycle shall come to its 
conclusion, at the moment when another cycle shall be at its be- 
ginning, then there is a discrimination, judgment, separation crisis, 
and that this separation shall be followed by the destruction of 
the wicked. Fishermen sit on the shore and throw away upon the 
sand all fish that cannot be sold in the market. And the fish die, 
rot, disappear. Now it is to be remarked that Jesus teaches the 
doctrine of the final destruction of the wicked at the end of this 
aeon, but connects with it the idea of suffering, teaching us that the 
wicked shall not rot away out of the universe painlessly, but shall 
be as if a man were cast into a furnace, when there should be pain 
in the process of destruction, pain which should vent its expres- 
sion, according to the character of the sufferer, in weak wailing or 
in terrific grinding of teeth. 

When Jesus had said these things he asked his disciples if they 
understood them, and when they said "yes," he added, "On this 
account every scribe disciplined for the kingdom of the heavens, 
is like to a man, a housemaster, who throws forth from his treasury 
new things and old." That is to say, that all who are to be ex- 
pounders of the truth must be themselves trained to it, and then 
must be, like householders, bringing forth whatever those who are 
the taught need, old tilings and new things. The truths of the 



360 SECOND AND TEJBD PASSOVEE IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

kingdom will perpetually expand to the soul's vision as they are 
studied. The truth is no worse for being old ; but if a man sup- 
poses that there will never be new revelations of truth he is 
sadly mistaken. It has always been a part of the injury which 
the race has suffered from churchism, that it has been taught that 
the limit of the knowledge of truth can be definitely fixed by one 
set of men for all men, and by one generation for all succeeding 
generations, so that a church may say in a council that such and 
such a thing is semper et ubique, always and everywhere the truth, 
and whosoever does not see it and acknowledge it to be truth, 
" let him be accursed." 

Every man disciplined for the kingdom pours out, to those 
whom he is in turn disciplining, all things new and old ; old truths 
in new developments of science and human experience ; and thus 
the truth, to the teacher's mind, is as old as the hills and as fresh 
as the flowers that grow thereon. And thus the word "ortho- 
doxy " comes to be the contempt of the wise and the horror of the 
good, for it no longer means " right thought," but the edict of an 
overbearing; and dogmatic and narrow self-conceit. The ortho- 
doxy of to-day may be the heterodoxy of to-morrow. Thinking 
which is right on the plane of the discoveries of to-day may be 
most wrong on the plane of the discoveries of to-morrow. A wise 
man holds on to all valuable truth bequeathed him by the ages, 
and seeks to gather something new to add thereto for the benefit 
of those who shall succeed him. Research ^ into the laws of the 
whole expanse of the kingdom of the heavens is as much taught 
as research into that small section we call the animal kingdom, 
the vegetable kingdom, or the mineral kingdom. New things are 
useful ; and so are old things. 



CHAPTEE YI1L 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 



About this time occurred one of those seasons of excitement in 
which the populace showed a disposition to make Jesus king, and 
hasten his revelation of his Messianic powers. >r „...,«,,,. 

-t Matt, vm. ; Mark iv. : 

These popular paroxysms were always so man- Luke viii., ix. Jesus 
aged by Jesus that they should create no outbreak, had no pohtlc8 - 
mid thus connect his name and mission with the ephemeral poli- 
tics of his nation. ~No man can be a great moral teacher and a 
politician. Politics are for a day; morality for eternity. It 
seems utterly impracticable to make any satisfactory conjecture 
as to the political opinions of Jesus, whether he was Herodian or 
anti-Ilerodian. He would have absolutely nothing to do with 
these questions. So, when another burst of excitement came, he 
directed his disciples to accompany him to the other side of the 
lake.* 

A certain scribe, an official expounder of the moral law, came 
to him and said, " Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." 
He may have amplified this short speech into a 

. . „, . . A political follower. 

statement or his views of the position and pros- 
pects of Jesus, or there may have been something in his mannei 
which showed that he had ulterior designs, or else Jesus read his 
character at a glance. The reply shows that the Teacher under- 
stood precisely the spirit in which the statement was made by this 
new disciple. " The foxes have lairs, and the birds of the heaven 
have places of shelter; but the Son of Man hath not where lie 
may lay lus head." 

It is supposed that Jesus adopted the name The Son of Man 
with reference to the prophetic vision of Daniel (vii. 13), and 
because all other titles of the Messiah had been perverted to fos- 



* Into Perea. The eastern side of 
the lake of Gennesaret and of the 
river Jordan was called "beyond." 



Hence its Greek name 
means "beyond." 



362 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

ter the worldly expectations of the Jewish people, and because it 
comported at once with the humility of his position and the dig- 
nity of his character. The scribe was willing to endure for a few 
days, or even a few months, the roving life which Jesus had 
adopted, expecting that the great Leader would soon ascend 
the throne of David, and then those who had shared his poverty 
would share his glorious fortunes. He was as cunning as a fox, 
and doubtless felicitated himself on his sharpness of calculation 
and superior skill in reading the signs of the times. 

The reply of Jesus is graphic and touching, and perhaps by its 

figures had reference to the cunning and the " fugitive character " 

of the scribe's enthusiasm. He did not mean to 

Jesus discourages him. , _ _ 

say strictly that the Son 01 Man had no sleeping- 
place, for he had at this very time some friends who devoted 
themselves to looking after his personal comfort, and, so far as we 
know, he was never without a night's lodging, except when he 
voluntarily set apart a night to devotional vigils. He simply 
meant that he had no fixed place of residence, a comfort enjoyed 
by even the lower order of animals. It was a solemn warning to 
the scribe, that if he joined his fortunes to those of Jesus he 
would become a homeless wanderer, as the Son of Man had given 
himself to a life of perpetual voluntary poverty. Whether the 
scribe became a " disciple," in the stricter sense, we have no 
means of knowing. Lange suggests that this was Judas Iscariot. 
But it is a mere hypothesis, suggested by the characteristics of 
Judas displayed by this scribe. 

Another of the followers of Jesus, called quite generally " dis- 
ciples," said to him, " Sir, permit me first to go and bury my 

father." Jesus replied, " Follow me, and leave 

A hard saying. x 

the dead to bury their own dead : but go thou and 
preach the kingdom of God." It is not said who this person was. 
A church tradition, which can be traced to Clement of Alexan- 
dria, in the third century, says it was Philip, which cannot be cor- 
rect, as he had already been called. Lange suggests Thomas, but 
this is only conjectural. It is not important. But the lesson of 
Jesus is. What did he mean ? The request of the follower seems 
natural, and even dutiful. The Jews buried their dead.* Great 
6tress was laid on this. The interment was conducted with mi- 

* The Greeks burned the corpses of I Pliny (vii. 55) say that burial was the 
their friends. Cicero (Legg.. ii. 22) and I ancient mode of disposing of the dead. 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 363 

nuteness of ceremonial. It was considered one of the most sacred 
duties of a son to bury his parents when they deceased.* The 
disciple in this case seemed to desire to follow Jesus. He did 
not make an excuse that he might go seeking his own pleasure or 
his own gain. It was to perform what all his nation regarded as 
a son' s imperative d uty. Celsus, early in the third century, brought 
the reply of Jesus as objection to him, because he demanded what 
was opposed to duty to parents. 

This saying of Jesus does present grave difficulties. We must 
interpret the word " dead " in both places in the sentence as mean- 
ing the same or different things. If the same, 

° . » . Its difficulty. 

then what is it? The plain sense is usually ac- 
cepted, namely, naturally dead. But this seems unintelligible, 
because corpses cannot inter corpses. If different, then we may 
attach to the former the sense of spiritually dead — those described 
by Paul as dead in trespasses and in sins — and to the latter the 
natural meaning ; and then the passage would signify, " Let the 
work of interment be committed to sinners." But that is a most 
harsh interpretation, and not consistent with the temper of Jesus 
and the general spirit of his teachings. 

If the whole expression be taken as hyperbolical and paradoxi- 
cal, it will give us this sense : Jesus thus teaches in the most strik- 
ing and impressive manner the lesson that the 
interests of the kingdom of the heavens, which he 
was preaching, are paramount, so that if there seem to be even a 
natural duty, the performance of which will draw a disciple of 
the Messiah from obeying some express command of his, then that 
apparent duty, even if it be that of burying a parent, is in reality 
not a duty. Let the dead go unburied rather than Jesus be dis- 
obeyed. It certainly is a claim on the part of Jesus to supremacy 
over the hearts and lives of his disciples. It is a claim to be more 
than teacher. It is a peremptory demand for the total surrender 
of the whole man to Jesus and the interests of his kingdom. It 
is the voice of a spiritual autocrat. Jesus must have felt that he 
had a right to all this, or he must have been conscious that he was 
putting forward a claim which he had no right to make. His 
consciousness at the moment this speech was made was either that 
of the Supreme Spiritual Ruler of the world or that of the most 

* Honorable mention is made of those I Gen. xxv. 9 ; xxxv. 29, etc. ; Tobit iv. 
who discharged this filial duty. See I 3. 



364 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

daring impostor. But he speaks unwaveringly, and died with this 
claim upon his lips, having never for a moment abated a jot there- 
of. There never was a teacher or leader, before the time of Jesus 
or after, who went so far as this. He stands alone in this claim. 

In immediate connection with this circumstance there occurred 
a similar occasion for a similar lesson. Another of his mere fol- 
lowers said, u Lord, I will follow thee, but let me 

Another lesson. i • -i r> -n • -r» 

go to bid farewell to those m my house. But 
Jesus said to him, " JSTo man putting his hand to the plough, and 
looking at the things behind, is rightly disposed for the kingdom 
of God." Here again is brought out the paramount importance 
of the kingdom of the heavens. The mind must have no inde- 
cision. A man who wavers so is as unfit for the great work of 
teaching the doctrine of the universal kingdom as one is unfit for 
agriculture who holds the handle of a plough and gazes back at 
the furrow. 

Upon dismissing the multitude who had waited upon his min- 
istry, Jesus went down to the shore of the lake and entered into 

a ship with his disciples. Accompanied by other 

Storm on the lake. r L L J 

and smaller vessels, they started tor the other 
side. Worn with the fatigue of teaching, Jesus fell asleep on a 
pillow in the hinder part of the ship. It was probably evening. 
There fell upon the lake one of those storms to which the pecu- 
liar position of the Sea of Galilee exposes it. Thompson (ii. 32) 
was for several days in one of those storms, which he thus de- 
scribes : — 

" To understand the causes of these sudden and violent tempests, we must 
remember that the lake lies low, six hundred feet lower than the ocean ; that 
the vast and naked plateaus of the Jordan rise to a great height, spreading 
backward to the wilds of the Hauran and upward to snowy Hermon ; that the 
water-courses have cut out profound ravines and wild gorges, converging to 
the head of the lake, and that these act like gigantic funnels to draw down 
the cold winds from the mountains. And, moreover, these winds are not only 
violent, but they come down suddenly, and often when the sky is perfectly 
clear. I once went in to swim near the hot-baths, and before I was aware a 
wind came rushing over the cliffs with such force that it was with great diffi- 
culty I could regain the shore." 

Of another storm, when on the eastern side, he says : — 

" The sun had scarcely set when the wind began to rush down toward the 
lake, and it continued all night long with constantly increasing violence, sc 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 365 

that when we reached the shore next morning the face of the lake was like a 
huge boiling caldron." ..." We had to double-pin all the tent-ropes, 
and frequently were obliged to hang with our whole weight upon them to keep 
the quivering tabernacle from being carried off bodily in the air." 

It was such a storm as this that was rocking the ship which 
held Jesus and the Apostles. The Teacher was in the quiet of 
slumber. The disciples perceived their great 

, . . Jesus stills the storm. 

jeopardy. They ran to him m terror, some cry- 
ing, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" while others cried, 
" Master, carest thou not that we perish ? " Their solicitude did 
not seem to be wholly selfish. Undoubtedly some of them in- 
cluded Jesus in that " we," as the most precious of all existences. 
It must have agitated them greatly to see a person who had ex- 
hibited such power and wisdom now lying in utmost carelessness 
asleep amid such imminent peril. Jesus arose and spoke unto the 
wild whirl and storm-fury, and said to the winds and the raging 
of the sea, " Peace ! be still ! " and the wind ceased at once and 
there was a great calm. The stars shone in the quiet sky above 
the quiet lake. And he quietly said to the men in the ship, 
" Why are ye so fearful ? Where is your faith ? " The simple 
exercise of such prodigious power over the forces of nature when 
in stormy motion, produced in their minds a sudden sentiment of 
awe. They were surprised and amazed, and filled with exceeding 
fear, and said to one another, " Who is this, that even the winds 
and the sea obey him ? " 

It was morning when Jesus and his disciples reached the south- 
eastern margin of the lake, in a region into which it was the 
intent of Jesus to carry his beneficent ministry, south-eastern shore 

This landing was signalized by a very remarkable of the lake Gennesa - 

-, , , .-, r -i • -i i • . . **» near C adara - 

miracle, the details ot which make it interesting Matt, m, ix. ; Mark 

to fix the locality, if possible. A difficulty meets v ' ; Lukeviii - 

us in the names employed by the historians. Matthew calls it the 

country of the Gazarenes, Mark of the Gerasenes, and Luke of 

the Gergesenes* Three places are mentioned in the ancient 

writers, Gadara, Gerasa, and Gergesa. The first was ten miles 

inland, and the approach to it was by a toilsome way, which would 

require several hours to make it on foot. It is represented by 

Josephus as the capital of Perea, and by Polybius as a very 

* The reading of Codex Sinaiticus is followed, and not the common English version. 



366 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVEK IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



strongly fortified city. The ruins to this day give evidence of 
great former magnificence. This can hardly be accepted as the 
place where the miracle was performed, as we find among its cir- 
cumstances the fact that a herd of swine ran down a steep place 
into the sea. In order to do so from Gadara, they must have run 
down a mountain in the neighborhood of the town, have forded 
a stream quite as formidable as the Jordan, and then crossed a 
plain of several miles before reaching the sea. For similar rea- 
sons we must reject Gerasa, a city also mentioned by Josephus as 
.situated among the mountains of Gilead, twenty miles east of the 




Jordan. The highest probability is in favor of a spot suggested 
by Dr. Thomson.* On the eastern shore of the lake he lias found 
a pile of ruins still called by the natives Gersa, very nearly pro 
nounced Gergesa, the name in Luke, and that which Origen gives 
as the supposed site of the miracle. Thomson represents that an 
" immense mountain " stands above these ruins ; so high and so 
declivitous that a herd of swine rushing frantically down would 
be carried by the momentum of the descent over the narrow ledge 
of beach into the sea. Mr. Tristam (in his Zand of Israel) in- 

* Land and Book, vol. ii. 35. 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 



367 



The demoniac. 



dorses this view of the question. It is to be noticed that the his- 
torians do not mention any particular town, but call the site of 
the miracle " the country of the " Gadarenes or Gergesenes, so 
that whatever town be selected, the miracle must have occurred 
near the sea, and somewhere near the site of the ancient city of 
the Gii'gashites. All that region abounds in rock excavated for 
purposes of sepulture, and to this day a whole community in that 
region make their dwellings in the tombs. The testimony of 
Origen, the ancient traditions, and the opinion of so well-informed 
a traveller as Thomson, concur to fix the place at the site of the 
ancient Gergesa. 

It was at this spot, then, that Jesus landed early in the morning 
winch followed the night in which he had calmed the storm on 
the lake. Here a sight met him more appalling 
than a tempest on a lake — the fury of a man 
lashed by the tortures of insanity. Mark and Luke speak of one 
demoniac, while Matthew mentions two. It is probable that there 
were two, but one was so much fiercer than the other, and his cure 
so much more striking, and his after-life so much better known to 
these historians, that they speak of him alone in a special man- 
ner.* He exhibited all the most shocking phases of that terrible 
physical, intellectual, and spiritual insanity which manifested 
itself so frightfully in the days of Jesus. He was so ungovern- 
ably frantic that he had abandoned the abodes of men and made 
his dwelling among the dead. He tore his clothes from his per- 
son. He was a terror to travellers, so that men might not pass by 
that way. He had acquired that wonderful strength which some- 
times seems to come to maniacs. Men could not keep him 
bound. Often they had chained him, but he burst the bonds 
asunder. Night and day this unhappy man, with fierce cries that 
made the rocks and seashore ring with the expression of his 
agony, roved through the wilderness or rushed along the beach of 
the lake. 

On this eventful morning he saw Jesus from afar. Whatever 



* Robinson, in his Harmony, proposes 
the following illustration : "In the year 
1824 Lafayette visited the United States 
and was everywhere welcomed with 
honors and pageants. Historians will 
describe these as a noble incident in his 
life. Other writers will relate the same 



visit as made, and the same honors as en- 
joyed by two persons, namely, Lafayette 
and his son. Will there be any contra- 
diction between these two classes of 
writers ? Will not both record the 
truth ?" See^Hor., 195. 



368 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDTE OF JESUS, 



may have been the cause, there was something in the appearance 
of Jesus that arrested him. He paused. He gazed. He ap- 
proached. He fell at the feet of Jesus. He cried, 

His appeal to Jesus. L 

" What to thee and me, Jesus, Son of God most 
high ? " Here is an exhibition of that flux and reflux of passion 
frequently noticed in maniacs. He was alternately attracted and 
repelled by the spiritual magnetism of the pure Jesus. Jesus 
commanded the unclean spirit to leave the unhappy man, who 
then cried out, " Comest thou here to torment us before the 
time ? " As if to steady the man's mind for a moment, and re- 
call him to a sense of his personality and identity, Jesus asked 
him his name. Still believing himself to be in possession of the 
departed spirits of wicked men, and recollecting how his whole 
intellectual and moral constitution had been laid waste, as when 
troops dismantle a town, and probably recalling the appearance 
of a battalion of Roman soldiers, the wretched sufferer said, with 
the confusion of ideas so natural to his condition, " My name is 
Legion, for we are many." And he besought Jesus that he would 
not send them away into " the abyss," whatever that might mean. 
On the adjoining mountain was a herd of about two thousand hogs 
feeding. The demons besought Jesus to allow them to enter the 
swine. 

If it were really the fact that evil spirits, whether such as had 
inhabited human bodies or not, had the power to seize and em- 
ploy the faculties of living human beings, the narrative shows 
that the powers of evil are full of a hateful malignity which is 
bent upon the work of destruction. If they could not occupy 
the bodily organs of men they were willing to use those of beasts, 
Jesus granted their request : forthwith they left the man and 
entered the swine ; and the swine ran frantically down a steep 
place and fell into the lake and were drowned.* 
The feeders of the swine went quickly to their 
employers in the city and related these marvellous incidents, 



The swine. 



* It requires some patience to give 
the least notice to such an objection as 
this : that it was a lawless act in Jesus 
to destroy the property of the owners 
of the hogs, and was cruelty to the 
swine themselves. Jesus did this work 
or he did not. If he did not, there is 
no ground for criticism in detail. If he 



did, he had all authority over hogs, 
devils, and men. As to the cruelty, the 
same objection would lie against every 
case of the prevalence of murrain in cat- 
tle, or of the disease known as the hog 
cholera, which has visited parts of 
America in late years. The only ques- 
tion is, Did such an incident as this oe- 



A CHAPTER OF MIKACLES. 



369 



The people from the city and the surrounding country nocked to 
the scene. When they beheld the placid face of the man who 
had been an untamable maniac, and saw him sitting clothed and 
in his right mind, and heard the narrative of the panic that had 
swept the swine away, and probably saw them floating in the lake 
beneath, the Gergesenes were seized with fear, and began to pray 
Jesus to leave their coasts. The recovery of their fellow-citizen 
was not to them such a matter of congratulation that they could 
afford to pay for it by the loss of their hogs. Jesus left them, and 
went down towards the ship. 

The healed and grateful patient accompanied his benefactor to 
the lake side, and solicited permission to follow him, which Jesus 
declined to give, saying to him, " Go to your home 

-. r • -i -i -i-i i i -i -r -i The grateful patient; 

and to your friends, and tell them what the Lord 
hath done for you, and hath pitied you." If the Gergesenes de- 
clined the personal ministry of Jesus, they should not be without 
a missionary. The restored demoniac, not only in his own town 
but throughout a district of ten cities, known as Decapolis, awoke 
the wonder of men by describing, as only such a man could, the 
horrible abyss out of which Jesus had so graciously lifted him. 

When Jesus recrossed the lake he found a crowd animated by 
sentiments the very opposite of those that had caused the Gerge- 
senes to urge him to depart from their coasts. The inhabitants 
of Capernaum and that region had been longing for his return. 
A day's absence was intolerable to people so enthusiastic in their 
admiration. The storm of the previous night had deepened their 
anxiety, so that they watched with interest the approach of the 
boat which held the great Teacher. They received him gladly 
and escorted him to his home in Capernaum. 



cur in the history of Jesus ? The his- 
torians, who were present, say it did. 
If these theories be rejected this r^iuch 
is left : A man was found exhibiting the 
phenomena described. Jesus spoke the 
words which are quoted as his. The 
change as described came upon the 
man. He was, or thought he was, held 
in the power of the souls of departed 
wicked men. They asked to be per- 
mitted to go into the swine, or, in his 
disordered fancy, he asked it for them. 
Jesus gave assent. At that instant an 

24 



immense herd of swine on the mountain, 
seized by a sudden and unaccountable 
panic, rushed over the ledge and fell into 
the sea. The man resumed his clothes 
and his reason. The owners of the 
swine were incensed, the spectators 
filled with awe, and Jesus was requested 
to leave their coasts. Apart from the 
settlement of the precise nature of de- 
moniac possession, which must always 
probably be perplexing, here is a history 
of extraordinary spiritual power. 



370 



SECOND A1H) THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



Jairus. 



As nearly as we can fix the date, we must here introduce several 
narratives of transactions which are given with great simplicity, 
capemaum. Matt. but are # vei 7 affecting. They present pleading 
ix. ; Mark v.; Luke sorrow in aspects most touching, and set forth the 
charm which the lovingness of Jesus, combined 
with his extraordinary power, was exerting upon people of all 
ranks. 

There was a man of distinction, the president of a synagogue,* 
whose name was Jairus. He had an only daughter, twelve years 
of age, and the girl was about to die. In his des- 
peration of grief the father bethought him of Je- 
sus, and, knowing where he was, ran to him and fell at his feet, and 
besought him to come and save the child. So bewildering was his 
grief that he gave a hurried and somewhat contradictory report 
of the state of affairs at home. He says she is dead. He says 
she is dying, f The facts seem to have been these : when he left 
the house she was apparently in extremis, she could live but a 
short time ; he had been absent about long enough for the end to 
have come ; " she would be dead," he said ; but he had not re- 
ceived distinct information of the event, and therefore was not 
prepared to affirm it ; and so in his agitation and hurry the father 
says: "My daughter is dead — she is dying — come! Lay thy 
hands on her, and she shall be saved and live ! " He forgot the 
formalities and dignities of his office in his natural love for his 
child. His faith seemed to increase in his extremity. It touched 
the heart of Jesus, who arose and went with him, and all the 
throng about him followed the party to see what the end of this 
might be, as the very going of Jesus seemed to promise that he 
would do something. 

seems to me, fail to see in these touches 
proofs that the affair occurred as all 
these historians tell it ; that Matthew, 
and Mark, and Luke are right, each 
and all, and that they could not have 
colluded here, and that this little scene 
could not have been painted by any 
master of fiction not superior to Shake- 
speare. To my mind there are few 
stronger internal marks of the genuine- 
ness and truthfulness of these narra- 
tives than this particular passage. 



* Every synagogue had its president, 
who superintended and directed the 
services, and was at the same time 
president of its college of elders. 

f It seems heartless to cite these self- 
contradictions of the poor man as proofs 
of the contradictions of the historians 
and the unreliability of the narrative. 
It ia more than heartless; it is sense- 
less. Careful observers of the workings 
of human passions, and close students 
of the poets, those quick reporters of 
the soul of the humanity, cannot, it 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 



371 



On the way there was an interruption and a wonder, shewing 
again what faith in Jesus was growing in the hearts of the peo- 



ple. There was a woman, whose name is pru- 



The woman with the 
hemorrhage. 



dently withheld, who had had an internal hem 
orrhage for twelve years. This troublesome disease had been an 
annoying and exhausting plague through all that time. It had 
probably prevented her marrying. She had expended her estate 
on physicians and nostrums.* She had not been helped, but in- 
jured. ISTow she was reduced from competence to poverty, and 
was afflicted with what seemed an incurable disease. But she 
had not lost her w r omanly delicacy. Hearing of the wonderful 
things which Jesus was doing, she had formed an incorrect idea 
of his character and power. She fancied that there was some- 
thing magical in his person. She said to herself, " If I touch f 
but the hem of his garment I shall be saved." As this hem, or 
blue fringe, was put on the garment by divine command, J perhaps 
she also fancied that special virtue would come through that part 
of the garments of the Great Healer. While the crowd thronged 
him she quietly mingled with them, and at a moment when 
she thought she was not perceived, she came up from behind him 
and touched the hem of his garment, and instantly felt a thrill 
and knew that she was healed of her plague. 

The loftiness of the character of Jesus now exhibits itself sub- 
limely. He knew§ what had been done. He knew the woman's 
mistake and the woman's faith. He intended to i s healed in touching 
correct the one and confirm the other. He would Jesus - 
not for a moment consent to have himself confounded with jug- 
glers, magicians, and miracle-mongers, even in the simple mind 
of a woman weakened by disease. He turned upon the crowd 



* For an extraordinary list of cures 
prescribed for this disorder, consult 
Lightfoot's Hot. Heb. on Mark v. 26. 

f The beauty is lost in our transla- 
tion, " may but touch," which may im- 
ply permission, while the idea with her 
was that if she could but accomplish of 
herself mere contact with his garment, 
it would be enough. 

X See Numbers xv. 37-40 ; Deut. 
xxii. 12. Because it was a badge to 
the Jews of being God's peculiar people, 



those who desired to be considered emi- 
nently pious were accustomed to " en- 
large the borders of their garments," a 
custom which the simple Jesus con- 
demned. See Matt, xxiii. 5. 

§ Not "perceived," as Luke viii. 46 
is rendered in our common version, 
which seems to favor the idea that it 
was involuntary upon the part of Jesus, 
while his whole conduct is quite the re» 
verse of this. 



372 SECOND AND TREED PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

and said : " Who touched my clothes ? " They all denied. Peter, 
always impetuous, and sometimes impatient even with his Master, 
said : " You see the throng, and you say, ' Who touched me % ' " 
But he assured them that some one had touched him with a pur- 
pose, and that he knew that that purpose had been accomplished. 
He evidently did not ask the question for his own information, 
but to draw the woman into an open confession. He would not 
let her go mistaken, although healed. He desired to put himself 
right before her mind, and to leave with her an intellectual and 
spiritual blessing which should even surpass the extraordinary 
physical favor he had conferred upon her. All the multitude- 
had come in contact with him, probably each one having touched 
more of his garment than this woman. She only had received 
any benefit. He determined to make her know that it was not mere 
animal magnetism, nor any unconscious magical influence, but 
that it was a voluntary response on his part to the pleadings of 
faith on hers. 

When the woman saw that she could not be hid, she came for- 
ward with confusion and trembling, and fell down before him 
and told before all the people all the truth — for 

Her faith confirmed. tit i-i-i« 

what cause she had touched him, and how she had 
been immediately healed. This was all that Jesus desired. He 
had tenderly abstained from extracting this confession until the 
poor woman was healed. She might not have been able to make 
it in advance. Now, although a trial, she was able to endure it. 
Jesus said: "Daughter, your faith hath saved you. Go in peace, 
and be well of your plague." He caused her and those who 
were about him to know that no miracle of good would ever 
be wrought for men who did not trust his beneficence ; and that 
in every case there must be desire and faith on the part of the 
subject, and volition upon the part of Jesus, to make the happy 
operation complete. This single incident lifts Jesus forever out 
of the mass of tricksters and magicians. 

While he was engaged in this work of mercy, messengers ar- 
ri ved from the house of Jairus informing him that his daughter 
Death of jairus's was certainly dead. He had accompanied Jesus 
daughter. uncomplainingly, but doubtlessly extremely rest- 

lessly, and now it appeared that the delay had blasted his hopes. 
He seems scarcely to have trusted that Jesus could raise her from 
the dead, while he believed that there was such power in him 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 



373 



that he could pluck her back from death even when she was 
almost m the last gasp. The messenger who announced the 
fatal news added : " Why troublest thou the Teacher further? " 
as though Jesus could now be of no avail. But his quick ear 
caught the word, and before Jairus could sink away into doubts 
Jesus said to him : " Be not afraid ; only believe ; and she shall 
be saved." Jesus by this word seemed to pledge himself to save 
her, even if she were really dead. 

And so he proceeded towards the house of Jairus. And when 
he arrived he found that they had already brought in the profes- 
sional mourners, who, after the vicious fashion j eS us brings her back 
of the Jews, were making loud lamentations, tolife - 
howling dirges amid the din of musical instruments, and beating 
themselves in token of grief. Jesus said to them : u Give place ; 
why make ye this ado % The child is not dead, but is sleeping." 
They took these words in their literal sense, and laughed Jesus 
to scorn. They knew that she was dead. She was, undoubtedly.* 
But Jesus taught the resurrection of the dead. On another occa- 
sion he called himself " The Resurrection." Since he has taught 
the world, those who believe his teachings do not sorrow for the 
dead as those who have no hope. Death is not destruction, nor 
annihilation — it is sleep. Sleep implies waking. So to the 
thought of Jesus, and of all who believe in his teaching, sleep is 
the most appropriate possible representation of death. "When 
men die we see them fall asleep. We do not see them awake. 
But Jesus, this wise Teacher, assures us that they do, and here he 
exerted his power to give men a visible and tangible example of 



* The attempt to put away all mira- 
cle out of this transaction, by taking- the 
words of Jesus literally, " She is not 
dead, but sleeping," cannot succeed. 
For suppose we grant that this was a 
mere case of syncope, and that the girl 
was still alive, there will yet remain 
these miraculous facts : 1. That before 
Jesus reached the house or saw the 
girl, he knew that she was not totally 
dead, although he had not seen her, and 
her father had represented her as dying, 
if not dead, and messengers direct from 
the house had proclaimed her dead; 
and, 2. When, having not hurried, but 



stopped to cure the woman with the 
hemorrhage, he reached the house, the 
mourners and assembled friends still 
saying she was dead, and laughing to 
scorn his literal or figurative saying, 
" She is not dead, but sleeping," he pro- 
ceeded to her chamber, accompanied 
by her parents and three other persons, 
and by two words and a single touch he 
brought her instantly to her feet, and to 
perfect health, after all the efforts 
which the skill of the physicians could 
devise had utterly failed. We must put 
the whole of Jesus out of history oi 
accept the miraculous. 



374 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

this great awakening. He entered the chamber of the dead, ac- 
companied by the father and mother, and by the three disciples, 
Peter, and James, and John, whom now for the first time we see 
elected from among the elect friends of Jesus, that they might 
be special witnesses of his greatest and most sacred doings. He 
approached the bed, took the girl by the hand, and said to her in 
the Aramaic tongue, " Talitha-cumi," which is simply, " Maiden, 
arise." It was no magical formula, no incantation, but a simple 
authoritative command. Her spirit came to her, and she arose 
straightway. 

In the confusion of the rapid and great transitions through 
which she had been passing, the girl walked about the room. 
The astonishment of the parents was so great that they forgot the 
necessities of the child ; but the ever calm Jesus simply told 
them to give her something to eat. She was necessarily weak. 
She was no ghost, although if a ghost had come it could scarcely 
have produced a different effect upon the spectators. So self -sus- 
tained was Jesus that these wonderful displays of his power 
seemed to him as the ordinary work of his hands. What man 
ever did such things and made no ado, exhibited no sense of his 
importance, took no pains to give the transaction all possible eclat f 
Jesus told them not to spread it. But they did. The fame of 
this miracle went abroad into all that land. 

As Jesus went from the house of Jairus, occasion presented 

itself for the performance of other strikingly wonderful works. 

On the road two blind men followed him, and 

Matt. ix. ,..-,, • o i • -i -i • 

solicited the exercise or his great healing power 
In the history of Jesus he is often confronted with blindness. 
We shall not wonder at this when we recollect how common that 
disease is in the East. In Cairo alone it has been estimated that 
there are four thousand blind persons, and one traveller supposes 
that one in every five is partially or totally blind. This arises 
from the brightness of the sun, the intense reflection of the light, 
the dust so impalpable or so constantly abroad in the air, and the 
custom of sleeping in the open air at night, exposing the eyes to 
noxious dews which produce inflammations that are usually neg- 
lected until they end in incurable blindness. 

Two such patients, perhaps by the way-side begging, learning 
that Jesus was passing, followed him, led by the crowd, it may be, 
and cried after him, " O Son of David, have pity on us." " Son 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 



375 



of David : " this was the recognized title of the Messiah. To 
accept it was to claim Messiahship. The blind men continued 
to repeat it. Jesus apparently paid no attention two blind men re 
to it or to them, but passed on and entered his stored - 
lodgings. The blind men somehow found their way to his pres- 
ence. Jesus said to them, " Do you believe that I am able to do 
this for you ? " They answered, " Yes, Lord." Then he touched 
their eyes and said, "According to your faith be it unto you." 
Their sight was instantly restored. Then Jesus, who made this 
response to their faith, charged them sternly — he really seems to 
have threatened them — that they should not make proclamation 
of their belief in his Messiahship. He could not have charged 
them to conceal their restoration to sight. There could be no 
reason why this should not be known. But there was a good 
and sufficient reason for restraining the public announcement of 
his claim to the Messiahship. The people were already begin- 
ning to believe it. They were in a state of intense excitement, and 
being always ready for a revolt against the Roman government, 
and their enthusiasm for Jesus growing at each display of his 
power and wisdom and goodness, a single word of incitement 
would have been, like a spark to a keg of gunpowder, the occasion 
of a terrific explosion. With extraordinary wisdom Jesus saw 
that his time had not yet arrived. 

Nevertheless, the blind men, in the exuberance of their grati- 
tude, proclaimed that the Messiah had healed them. The prac- 
tical effect of this disobedience, which can only be charitably 
excused on the ground of their uncontrollable delight at their 
recovery, had no good effect on the minds of the enemies of Jesus. 

These men had scarcely left the house when the people brought 
to Jesus another of those bewildering cases of fearful disease, a 
demoniac. The patient in this case was one j eS us cures a dumb 
whose psychical disorder had the physical exhi- demoniac - 
bition of dumbness. His diseased soul locked up his tongue 
His insanity took on the form of speechlessness, through pro- 
foundest melancholy or most obdurate stubbornness. As soon as 
the evil of his soul was cured his speech returned. The multi- 
tude marvelled still more, and said, " It was never so seen in 
Israel," or, as it may be translated, " He has never been so seen 
in Israel." Either rendering makes the speech of the populace 
an ascription to Jesus of glory greater than that of any of the 



376 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

prophets. It lifted him above Moses and Elijah. It declared 
him to be, in their opinion, the most splendid display of God's 
glorious goodness and power ever made to Jehovah's chosen peo- 
ple. It was the most magnificent compliment which people living 
under a theocracy could pay to any man. 

Of course the tendency of this was to inflame the Pharisaic 
party against him. They made the old objection, " He casteth 
charged with being oufc demons by the ruler of the demons." It is 
a confederate of the now no longer a whisper, slyly circulated, but an 
open accusation, made to break his influence over 
the popular mind. Infernal passions manifestly swayed these 
Pharisees, so that naturally it was not difficult for them to believe 
that any one so strong as Jesus had his strength from bad spirits. 
There has always been in human nature an unfortunate pro- 
pensity to imagine the chief evil spirit of the universe to be 
mightier than he is. Men are prone to deify the devil. Even 
many Christians have to pause and think before they disabuse 
their minds of the prejudice that Satan is just less than Almighty 
God. Creative power is often assigned him, and the power of 
inspiring great thoughts and stimulating human genius. "When 
printing was invented, the honor was assigned to " the devil and 
Dr. Faustus." It is a popular opinion in parts of Germany to 
this day, that the famous cathedral of Cologne owes its magnifi- 
cence to the co-operation of the devil : it is too splendid a struc- 
ture to have been erected without his aid ! On the road over the 
St. Gothard Pass, in Switzerland, is a wonderful bridge across the 
river Peuss, joining the wild scenery of two mountains by a span 
of seventy-five feet. Of course it is the " Devil's Bridge ! " The 
Pharisees would have gladly obtained power from the ruler of 
the demons if they had only known how : it was quite easy, then, 
for them to fancy that Jesus had discovered the secret. That the 
Father of Men should confer so beneficent a power upon any of 
his sons was an idea too broad for the narrow minds of the 
Pharisees. And so they persecuted Jesus, not because of the sin 
of being in league with the devil, but out of sheer envy that he 
had made better terms with Satan than they and their children 
had been able to do. In Matthew xii. 27, does not Jesus intimate 
as much ? 

Jesus now withdrew himself and went with his disciples to his 
own country. This avoidance of the spite of his enemies seems to 



A CHAPTER OF MIRACLES. 377 

evince only a prudential regard to the success of his work, and 

in no way to indicate cowardice, as he was always ready to meet 

them in argument ; and when he shifted the range 

of his operations, he never for a day ceased to jj^jf ** Matt ' xau : 

urge forward his work. He was not yet ready to 

give himself up. His disciples were not yet ready to be left. 

Jesus was no wild fanatic, no furious enthusiast rushing on fate. 

He had the great faculty of being able to wait : but he was a 

ceaseless worker. He foresaw his time coming. He would not 

hurry it. It was coming fast enough. 

Once more he entered Nazareth, a town to be made immortal 
by being attached to his name. On the Sabbath he entered the 
synagogue and began to teach. He taught astonishingly. His 
knowledge, his goodness, his power, and, perhaps above all, his 
authority came out in his speech. The Nazarenes could not com- 
prehend it. It seemed to them only a few months, and it had not 
been long since he had lived in their midst among their humblest 
fellow-citizens. They knew the dwelling of Mary. They knew 
her other children. None of Mary's other children made any pre- 
tension to either special sanctity or special authority. Nay, they 
did not believe in the pretensions of their brother Jesus. He had 
failed to inspire them with confidence. He came to them with a 
crowd at his back, and bringing home a reputation as a prophet 
the like of which had not been known in their day. He had per- 
formed miracles, had even raised the dead, not far from Nazareth. 
But it seemed like yesterday since they had seen him in his shop 
with the implements of the mechanic, making or mending plain 
furniture, or had seen him carrying his tools to neighboring houses 
to do repairs. There was nothing specially attractive in his ap- 
pearance. When he sat in the synagogue no halo hung over his 
brow. But now this plain man came back and assumed great 
authority, and really did teach in a style surpassing anything they 
had ever heard before. 

And so they talked among themselves and said, " Whence hath 
this one this wisdom and mighty powers ? Is he not a carpenter ? 
Is he not a carpenter's son ? Is not his mother 
the woman called Mary? Is he not the brother A sain rejected by hi. 

«/ own people. 

of James and Joses, and Judas and Simon ? Are 

not his sisters all here with us ? Whence hath this man all these 

things?" They showed him no violent opposition, but merely 



378 



SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



regarded him with contempt. His return for this treatment wan 
the simple annonncement of a well-known fact in human nature : 
" A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and 
among his own kin, and ii] his own house." He did nothing note- 
worthy in Nazareth, except that he laid his healing hands on a few 
sick people. He left Nazareth, marvelling at the unbelief of ita 
inhabitants. 




MAP OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH GALILEE. 



CHAPTER IX 



From Nazareth Jesus entered upon his third circuit in Galilee; 
the extent of which tour cannot be defined. Matthew says that 
he " went about all the cities and villages." Mark, 
that "he went round about the villages." All ^f^^^l 
concur that he was teaching and preaching his Lukeix., x. 
peculiar doctrines, and displaying his great power 
of healing. The multitudes continued to throng him. They had 
had the formal instruction of the Established Church, but the 
mass of the people were destitute of moral and religious culture. 
They appeared to the eye of Jesus as sheep that had no shepherd, 
torn to pieces by hierarchic wolves. And yet the people seemed 
desirous of spiritual training. At sight of this Jesus said to his 
disciples, " The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few ; 
pray therefore the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth 
laborers into his harvest." It was the suggestion of the mission 
ary idea and the kindling of the missionary spirit. It was a hint 
as to what his intentions were for immediate missionary opera- 
tion. 

In pursuance of this design he called his twelve chosen disci- 
ples together, and commissioned and instructed them for this 
new institution of propagandism. He intended 
to disseminate his doctrines more rapidly and m ^ t mlB8ten,U7 mov ^ 
more widely. These men had been with him long 
enough to be weaned from other pursuits, to be attached to his 
person and his plans, and to have acquired such facility in co- 
operation that they could work together. Jesus instituted seven 
itinerant centres of influence. Not stopping in his own work, he 
Bent the twelve in pairs. Their work may be better gathered 
from their commission in the words of Jesus than from any para- 
phrase. He addressed them thus : — 



380 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

" Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and enter not into a city of the 
Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And 
going, preach, saying, The kingdom of the heavens is 
at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lep- 
ers, cast out demons : freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither 
gold, nor silver, nor copper in your girdles, nor a wallet for your journey, noi 
two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff. And into whatever city or village ye may enter, 
inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide till ye depart : go not from house 
to house : and into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such 
things as are set before you ; for the laborer is worthy of his food. But as ye 
enter into the house, salute it, saying, 'Peace be to this house.' And if indeed 
the house be worthy, your peace shall come upon it : but if it be not worthy, 
your peace shall return to you. And whoever will not receive you, nor hear 
your words, on going out of that house, or city, or village, shake off the dust 
from your feet for a testimony against them : notwithstanding, be ye sure of 
this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto them. Verily I say to you, 
it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and the land of Gomorrah, 
in the day of judgment, than for that city. 

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Begin ye 
therefore to become wise as the serpent, and simple as the doves. But beware 
of men : for they will deliver you up to councils, and will scourge you in the 
synagogues : and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, 
for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. And when they deliver you up, 
be not over-anxious how or what ye shall speak : for it shall be given to you 
ir that hour what ye shall speak. For ye are not the speakers, but the Spirit 
of your Father speaking in you. And a brother shall deliver up a brother to 
death, and a father a child ; and children shall rise up against parents, and 
shall put them to death. And ye shall be hated by all on account of my 
name ; but the one having endured to the end shall be saved. But when they 
persecute you in this city, flee into another : for verily I say to you, Ye shall 
not finish the cities of Israel until the Sen of Man come. 

" A disciple is not above his teacher, nor the servant above his lord. Suffi- 
cient for the disciple that he be as his teacher, and the servant as his lord. If 
they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of 
the household ? Fear them not, therefore, for there is nothing covered that 
shall not be revealed, and hidden that shall not be known. What I say to you 
in the darkness, speak in the light : and what ye hear in the ear, preach upon 
the housetops. And fear not those who kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the soul : but rather fear the one able to destroy both soul and body in Gehen- 
na. Are not two sparrows sold for an assarion ? * and not one of them shall 

* This indicates a coin of small value, 
perhaps more than an American cent and 
less than an English penny. Here is a 
picture of a bronze specimen of this coin. 
On one side is an anchor, and the Greek 
mite of hekod. letters for Herod Bad (Herod King), and 

ob the obverse two cornucopiae and a pomegranate. 




THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE. 381 

fall on the ground without your Father. But even the hairs of your head are 
all numbered. Fear ye not then ; ye are of more value than many sparrows. 
Every one, therefore, who will confess me before men, I also will confess him 
before my Father in heaven. • 

11 Think not that I came to cast peace on the earth : I came not to cast peace, 
but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter 
against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And 
the enemies of a man are those of his own household. He who loveth father 
or mother above me, is not worthy of me: and he who loveth son or daughter 
above me, is not worthy of me. And he who taketh not Ms cross, and fol- 
loweth after me, is not worthy of me. He who tindeth his life shall lose it : 
and he who loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He who receiveth you 
receivcth me, and he who receiveth me receiveth him who sent me. He who 
receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive the reward of a 
prophet; and he who receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous 
man, shall receive the reward of a righteous man. And whoever may give to 
drink to one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a 
disciple, verily I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." 

Jesus gives directions to his disciples as to the route they were 
to take, as well as a commission for the work they were to per- 
form. They were not to 2:0 among; the Roman 

J . . Their route. 

settlements nor bevond the boundaries of Samaria. 
" "Rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," explains the 
direction as one not founded on bigotry or Jewish intolerance, but 
as a temporary economic arrangement. All men were afterward 
to have his gospel, but this was a " trial trip," a missionary exer- 
cise for the Apostles among their own people, almost under his 
own eyes. 

He imparted to them, of his peculiar power, ability to heal the 
sick, to cleanse lepers, to eject demons, and to raise the dead. 
Whether they found on this excursion any occa- 

. 1 . . . . n Their powers. 

sion to exercise this great power m the raising of 
the dead, we are not informed. But all these things were merely 
subservient to the "preaching of the kingdom." That was to be 
their great work, the chief absorbing labor of their lives. 

The next direction is that they are to make no provision for 
their personal comfort, in the way of money and clothes. They 
were to preach the gospel without pay. They 

,, . , - , , . • * Tneir Provision. 

had received ireely, they were to give freely. 
The gospel was not to be sold. They were to go forth free of 
care and do their great work. Their Lord assured them that they 
should not fail of support. The people would receive them 



382 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER BS THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

They were not to be encumbered with baggage. Their wants 
were to be simple, and those wants were to be supplied. It was 
a general principle he seems to have laid down for the governance 
of all future missionary operations. A man going forth with the 
truth will find those who are ready to minister to his wants. 

And then he sets forth the method in which he desired his gos- 
pel propagated. It was not by founding churches, not by erect- 
ing great and powerful ecclesiastical apparatus. 

The home-altar. & fe r . rr 

He seems never to have intended to found a 
church like this, like anything indeed now represented by our 
modern " denominations." His " church " was to be of all those 
who trusted in him, believed him, followed him, loved him. Its 
work was the dissemination of certain principles. It is observa- 
ble that he chose the hearth-stone as the altar of the temple of 
the new faith. His apostles were to enter houses, not cry aloud 
in the streets, nor harangue the crowds. They were to carry the 
seeds of the newly quickened religion to the homes and the hearts 
of men. They were to sit down among the parents and children 
and servants, and tell them what Jesus was teaching, explain to 
them what the " kingdom " was, and was to be, and how it was to 
interpenetrate all life from bottom to top. They were to cure and 
cleanse men spiritually, and in confirmation of their mission cure 
and cleanse them physically. The religion of Jesus is not a tem- 
ple religion. It does not consist in periodical visits to the altar- 
spot, ceremonial offering of specified sacrifices, nor anything else 
churchly and ritual. It was to be the religion for the home. It 
was to draw all men near to the Father of all men. It was to 
make the earthly home a type of the heavenly, a terrestrial school 
of preparation for the celestial " life to come." It was to be a 
religion of principle. Some families would receive them, others 
would reject. They are told how to conduct themselves in either 
event. 

But he warns them that it is not to be always easy work. They 
were not always to be immediate and radiant victors. The oppo- 
sition they should meet would be powerful and for- 

A warning. , 

midable. The Jews would oppose them. Some- 
times, instead of carrying captive the congregation in the syna- 
gogue, the poor Apostle would be enduring a scourging. The 
Gentile governors and kings would set them at naught. What 
seemed so true to them would seem so false to others ; what seemed 



THE THIRD TOUE OF GALILEE. 383 

so beautiful to them would be so ugly and hateful to others. 
They should be called to answer suddenly at the highest pagan 
tribunals. But they were not to be anxious. The right word 
would come at the right hour. They are to keep themselves in 
the love of the truth and be not specially careful for their oratory. 
He particularly tears away all self-conceit from them by saying 
" Ye are not the speakers, but the Spirit of your Father." This 
lifts them above all selfish anxiety. It is not their work, but 
another's. If they be persecuted in one city they must flee to 
another. They have no further work in the one, and they have 
something to do in another. Providence sometimes leads and 
sometimes drives. 

But he gives them this consolation — that they shall not have 
finished visiting the cities of Israel " until the Son of Man come." 
It is not quite easy to determine satisfactorily 

, , . , v ° A. consolation. 

what this phrase means. It may mean that he 
should join them in person before long, and thus be present to 
aid and direct them. To this it is to be objected that the portion 
of this solemn charge which begins with " Behold, I send you 
forth as sheep," really seems not to have had application to them 
in their temporary missionary excursions, but to their much longer 
apostolic career after the death of Jesus. Certainly the events 
which he foretold did not take place until then. The interpreta- 
tion suggested by Stier is that it applies to the apostolic labors 
in Judaea, which were to be closed by the coming of the Son of 
Man in the destruction of Jerusalem, and, by extension, that it 
applies to the operations of his messengers in the towns of the 
spiritual Israel. But all this seems mystical. These men were 
going on a practical mission, which Jesus tells them was so full of 
peril that their lives should be in constant jeopardy. It was no 
time to talk romantic theology to them. Jesus meant something 
practical which they could understand. Just what it was I do 
not know, but its general significance seems to be that, no matter 
how industriously they worked, and however rapid their move- 
ments, they could not visit all the towns before their mission 
should be accomplished. And this was probably the sense, 
whether their temporary tour be considered or their travels and 
labors after the death of their Teacher. 

He still further confirms and strengthens them by reminding 
them of his own case. They readily acknowledged him as theii 



384 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

Master and Lord ; but he had all kinds of opprobrium heaped 

upon him. He had not had a serene and brilliant public life 

His was not the work of gradually winning men 

Hia own case. o J o V/ - Ltt 

to the truth ; it was a terrific battle with error 
and evil. The disciple is not above his master, the servant is no1 
above his lord. They were to push the battle forward. He had 
spoken to them privately; they were to declare his doctrines 
openly. What they had heard in the closet they must proclaim 
upon the house-top. But there was to be no timidity and pusil- 
lanimity. A special providence would be vouchsafed them. To 
sparrows, one of which is worth scarcely a penny, God's guar- 
dianship extends, so that one of them does not fall without his 
notice. The arrow of the archer cannot reach him unless God 
so wills. That same heavenly Father counts every hair of every 
head. How much more precious is the head than the hair, the 
man than the sparrow ! And a man set to the promulgation of 
great truths, how precious is he ! He shall not be destroyed care- 
lessly. On the other hand, he warns them by their fear of God 
as well as by their confidence in his love. The persecutor lives 
his day ; the martyr has eternity. Men may destroy the body. 
They reach their limit there. God can destroy both soul and 
body in eternity. He seems to teach that the final punishment 
of the incorrigibly wicked shall be the final destruction of both 
soul and body. 

He gives his Apostles to understand that the propagation of his 
gospel would be a process of discrimination, and an occasion, not 

The gospel to be a a cause, of wide-spread and bitter antagonisms. 
discrimination. jj e announces his intention of claiming and striv- 

ing to win the best love of every man. Every earthly affection 
in the disciple is to become subordinate to his devotion to his 
Master. Father, mother, son, daughter, — every other relationship 
and love must sit down at his feet. He intends to make himself 
king by obtaining monarchic sway over the hearts of men. Life 
itself is to be laid on the altar of this love. If a man shrink 
from the service of Jesus in order to preserve his life, he will 
surely lose it. He who yields himself, in the wise abandonment 
of a reasonable devotion, to Jesus, shall find all the good and 
sweet there is in life. Jesus will know, remember, and reward 
every least act of help to his kingdom or to those who are engaged 
in upbuilding it — even to the giving of a cup of cold water to a 



THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE. 385 

disciple. He intends to invest all his followers with a portion of 
his own dignity. Whosoever receives a minister of the gospel is 
to be regarded as one who has received Jesus into his house, as 
Jesus is to be king of hearts ! 

It must have been appalling to the Apostles when Jesus spoke 
of " taking up the cross" and following him. Pie had not been 
crucified ; there was no prospect that he would 

' . n A frightful figure. 

be : he had given them no intimation of any 
suspicion on his part that his career would have so disastrous a 
termination. But the cross as an instrument of ignominious tor- 
ture was well known to them ; and they most probably interpreted 
this phrase figuratively, as it was intended, to mean great pain 
and shame to be brought upon them by becoming preachers of 
the gospel. 

The whole address is a great step forward. It commissions 
Apostles to open the way before him. His hour was coming. He 
was advancing his claims. He was prudently but 

, . . , . P , it r i • A great step forward. 

unhesitatingly going forward on the line or his 
mission. He might have retreated hitherto ; now he must go for- 
ward to any fate that might lie in the path he had chosen. 

The disciples went on their way. Jesus continued to work. 
They were all engaged in preaching repentance as preparatory to 
the receiving of the Messiah. We are not now able to learn how 
large was the missionary circuit of the Apostles, but it is very ap- 
parent that it excited a great popular interest in the person and 
work of Jesus. 

At the instigation of Herodias, Herod had, as we have seen, 
seized and imprisoned John the Baptist, because the bold preacher 
had rebuked him for living in adultery with II e- 

-,. -. ,.. ., . . n „ -r-,, , , . John the Baptist ex- 

rodias, who was his sister-in-law, the wire or Jrhilip. eC uted. Matt. xiv. 1- 
He mav also have feared lest the growing in- 13 ? Mark "• 21_29; 

° o o Luke ix. 7-9. 

lluence of John upon the populace might become 
&: great as to give him political power, if he chose to exert it. 
For entire safety he had confined the Baptist in the castle of 
MachsBrus. Herodias never forgave John his denunciation of 
this adulterous connection, but continued to plot against his life, 
and at last succeeded Herod's birthday arrived. He made a 
Bupper for his lords, high captains, and chief-estates. At a 
warm stage of the revel the daughter of Herodias entered and 
danced before the assembly, danced so seductively that Herod, iu 
25 



386 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IS THE LDJE OF JESUS. 



his hot admiration, promised to give her whatever she should ask, 
to the half of his kingdom. To convince her, he backed up this 
foolish promise by an oath. She conferred with her vindictive 
mother, who instructed her to demand the head of John the Bap- 
tist. To this demand Herod was extremely reluctant to comply 
Nevertheless, as the historian says, "for his oath's sake, and for 
their sakes who sat at meat, he would not reject her." An execu- 
tioner went forthwith and brought the horrible gift in a charger, 
which the hardened daughter carried to her callous mother. 
John's disciples heard that he had been executed, and went and 
buried his headless corpse. 

It was at this juncture that the fame of Jesus reached the court 
of Herod. That potentate was superstitious as well as lustful 

. , ,_ and cruel. When he heard the marvellous things 

Herod hears of Jesus. # m ■ ° 

which Jesus was doing he was perplexed, and 
said to his friends that it was John risen from the dead. They 
endeavored to allay his terror by saying that it was Elias, or the 
spirit of some other of the older prophets reappearing in Jesus. 
But Herod's alarms were not so easily dissipated. He retained 
and affirmed the conviction that his victim had risen from the 
dead. He determined, if possible, to see Jesus, who was mani- 
festly becoming as important, in a political point of view, as 
Herod had supposed John to be. When Jesus heard that Herod 
had begun to manifest an interest in his movements, and saw 
that the people were reaching a pitch of excitement which might 
easily transport them into violence, he judged it best to withdraw 
himself from a position in which he was liable to have his great 
work interrupted by the arousing of a tyrant's terrors by popular 
demonstration in his behalf. 

In the mean time the disciples had returned and reported the 

results of their missionary tour. Perhaps the news of the death 

of John hastened their return.* Mark mentions 

Return of the twelve. 

another reason: the Apostles had returned from 
their tour, by the labors and circumstances of which they were 
excited, and they needed refreshment for coming conflicts. Jesus 



* It does not appear how long they 
were absent on this preaching tour. 
Wieseler and Teschendorf make it only a 
flay ; Ellicott, two days ; Greswell, that 
hey left in February and returned in 



March, one or two months ; and Krafft 
extends it to several months. We can 
hardly suppose that it was less than 
several weeks. 



THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE. 



387 



withdrew them from their public ministry, and went with them 
into a desert place. If he had not done so, now that he was 
becoming so popular, and the people so much excited by his min- 
istry, and the slaughter of John having undoubtedly produced a 
very profound impression, it is probable that a sedition w r ould 
have occurred, and Herod would have charged it to his ministry. 
And this sedition was all the more probable as the people did not 
recognize him as a divine person, but only as a very great prophet. 
There was every prudential reason for retiring. He took a boat 
with his disciples and went over to a portion of uninhabited shore, 
probably near the town of Bethsaida, in Perea. He was not flying 
from Herod so much as from the people. But he could not be 
hid. The excited populace, seeing the movement and conjectur- 
ing the destination, ran around the head of the lake and reached 
the spot before the landing of Jesus, who, when he came out, saw 
that privacy was impracticable. He looked on that great multi- 
tude, anxious and panting from the exertion they had made to 
gain the spot.* He had compassion upon them. Their spiritual 
pastors had abandoned them. They were as sheep without a shep- 
herd. The tender-hearted Jesus could not forbear. So, going to 
an elevation, he sat down, and for hours gave them instruction in 
the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. 

And when the day was far spent his disciples reminded him 
that it was a desert place and that the people, had long been with- 
out food, and urged him to send them away to find food and 



* The distance was from six to eight 
miles, and could be passed over as 
quickly by those who hastened on foot 
as by those who crossed the lake in a 
boat. Bethsaida probably lay on both 
sides the Jordan, just where it entered 
into the lake. On the east is the level 
plain of Buthiah, in the shape of a tri- 
angle, made by the eastern mountains, 
the lake shore, and the river side. Dr. 
Thomson concludes, and I think shows, 
that the site of the feeding of the five 
thousand was in the south-eastern angle 
of this plain, where the hills come close 
to the shore. He says (vol. ii. p. 29), 
" From the four narratives of this stu- 
pendous miracle, we gather, 1st, That, 
the place belonged to Bethsaida; 2d 



That it was a desert place ; 3d, That it 
was near the shore of the lake, for they 
came to it by boats ; 4th, That there was 
a mountain close at hand ; oth, That it 
was a smooth grassy spot, capable of 
seating many thousand people. Now 
all these requisites are found in this 
exact locality, and nowhere else, so far 
as I can discover. This Butaiha be- 
longed to Bethsaida. At this extreme 
south-east corner of it the mountain 
shuts down upon the lake, bleak and bar- 
ren. It was, doubtless, desert then as 
now, for it is not capable of cultivation. 
In this little cove the ships (boats) were 
anchored. On this beautiful sward, at 
the base of the rocky hill, the people 
were seated." 



388 



SECOND Aim THIED PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



lodging in the surrounding country. To this he replied, " They 
need not depart ; give ye them to eat." Previous to this, probably 
Miraculous feeding of early in the afternoon, Jesus had questioned Philip 
five thousand. as t ^ ow i^qj should manage to feed so great a 

congregation of people. There may have been two reasons for 
putting this question to Philip, namely, that he was a man very 
slow of spiritual apprehension, and was a citizen of the neighbor- 
ing town of Bethsaida. John says that Jesus thus questioned 
Philip to prove him. Philip's reply shows his spiritual obtuse- 
ness. Jesus was putting forth his claim to Messiahship more and 
more distinctly. But Philip could not discover it. He replied, 
" Two hundred denarii worth of loaves is not sufficient for them, 
that every one should receive a little." This intimation of the 
impossibility of making so heavy a purchase shows the scantiness 
of the exchequer of the circle of Jesus. " Thirty dollars would 
not feed them ! and where have we that sum ? " Jesus seems to 
have left the perplexing question with Philip until late in the 
afternoon, when his disciples suggested the difficulty to him, to 
which he replied as above, and added, " How many loaves have 
you ? " Andrew answered that they had found in the multitude 
a lad who had five barley loaves and two small fishes. He ordered 
them to be brought to him, and then commanded the multitude to 
be seated on the green grass, in plots or squares, so that there were 
alleys between, and the whole slope looked like a garden whose 
parterres were filled with human beings. He then looked up to 
heaven and blessed and brake the loaves, and handed them to the 
disciples to set before the multitude. There were about -five thou- 
sand men, beside women and children. The orderly arrangement 
secured ample opportunity to each to eat as much as he would, as 
long as the food lasted. They did all eat and were filled. When 
they could eat no more Jesus directed the fragments to be gath- 
ered, that nothing be lost, and the disciples gathered twelve bas 
kets * full of the fragments and of the fishes that remained over 
after all had eaten. 



* This is the translation in the com- 
mon version, and is correct, that being 
the ordinary meaning- of the word. But 
does it not mean that the twelve Apos- 
tles filled each his wallet with the frag- 
ments ? Whence did they have so many 
empty baskets? But the very word 



which is here translated "baskets" 
does mean "wallet," and was applied 
to the travelling-bag which every Jew 
carried. To this Juvenal alludes, using 
the very word employed in this passage, 
" Judeeis, quorum cophinus faenumqu« 
supellex." (iii. 14.) 



THE THIRD TOTTC OF GALILEE. 389 

How this was performed we have no means of knowing. The 
historians recite the facts and offer no theory. There was no 
supply called forth from the multitude, and the 

J- J- ^ ' No theory. 

disciples had none in reserve. The astonishment 
and enthusiasm of all parties show this. It could have been no 
feat of legerdemain. It has had no parallel, and no attempt has 
been made, so far as is known to us, to imitate it. It was no has- 
tening of the process of nature, for it was baked bread that was 
multiplied. If a handful of uninjured wheat had been made to 
grow in an hour into the bulk of a harvest, the process would have 
been measurably intelligible, and might have been described as 
an astoundingly rapid pushing forward of natural processes. But 
here were five baked loaves, and two small fishes already cooked. 
More than five thousand persons, after a long fast, ate of these and 
nothing else, ate to repletion, and then the fragments were hugely 
more than the original bulk. It was an astounding fact, a stu- 
pendous act, and was so regarded by those who were of that large 
party. Whether the food grew in the hands of Jesus, or in the 
hands of the disciples, or in the hands or in the mouths of the 
eaters, there seems no possibility of knowing. The historians, who 
were eye-witnesses, do not adventure an opinion. Nor can we. 
It is a fact in the history of Jesus, and as such we must simply 
record it and honestly study it. 

How this wonderful performance was regarded by the multi- 
tude is manifest from the fact that their false Messianic views 
were so highly excited thereby that they were Matt, xiv.; Mark vi.; 
ready to rise in rebellion against the Eoman J^vi. 
power, and crown Jesus as their king, and insist that he should 
lead them forth to a victorious revolt. Perceiving that they would 
make him king by force, and thus push him into a false position, 
Jesus showed wonderful force of character and sagacity by first 
sending away his disciples, that they might not catch this political 
fever and complicate the difficulties of the situation by joining 
the people in their mad attempt. In the absence of his immedi- 
diate friends and followers it would be more easy to manage the 
mob, for such the multitude seems to have become. And he did 
succeed in dispersing them. 

At this point occurs a difference in the directions given by Jesus 
to the disciples as recorded by two of the historians. John saya 
the disciples went over the sea toward Capernaum, and Mark 



390 second and third passoveb m the ldje of jesus. 

says that Jesus constrained them to get into the ship and to gc 
to the other side before him unto Bethsaida. Dr. Thomson, 

a difficulty explained. whose intimate personal knowledge of the Holy 
Land makes him the very highest authority, says 

" Looking back from this point at the south-eastern extremity of the Bu- 
taiha, I see no difficulty in these statements. As the evening was coming on, 
Jesus commanded the disciples to return home to Capernaum, while he sent 
the people away. They were reluctant to go and leave him alone in that des- 
ert place ; probably remonstrated against his exposing himself to the coming 
storm and the cold night air, and reminded him that he would have many 
miles to walk round the head of the lake, and must cross the Jordan at Beth- 
saida before he could reach home. To quiet their minds, he may have told 
them to go on before toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd, prom- 
ising to join them in the night, which he intended to do, and actually did, 
though in a manner very different from what they expected. Still, they were 
reluctant to leave him, and had to be constrained to set sail. In this state of 
anxiety they endeavored to keep near the shore between this and Bethsaida, 
hoping, no doubt, to take in their beloved Master at some point along the 
coast. But a violent wind beat off the boat, so that they were not able to 
make Bethsaida, nor even Capernaum, but were driven past both." 

When the disciples had started, and the multitude had been dis- 
persed, Jesus went into a mountain apart to pray, and so remained 
until the fourth watch of the ni^ht : that is, be- 

Storm on the lake. . i • t 

tween three and six o clock m the morning. In 
the mean time there came upon the lake one of those furious storms 
which sometimes sweep down through the valleys and plough 
the lake furiously. Dr. Thomson's description (ii. 32) is a vivid 
help to our imaginations in endeavoring to realize the scene : 

" My experience in this region enables me to sympathize with the disciples 
in their long night's contest with the wind. I spent a night in that Wady 
Shukaiyif, some three miles up it, to the left of us. The sun had scarcely set 
when the wind began to rush down toward the lake, and it continued all night 
long with constantly increasing violence, so that when we reached the shore 
next morning the face of the lake was a huge boiling caldron. The wind 
howled down every wady from the north-east and east with such fury that no 
efforts of rowers could have brought a boat to shore at any point along that 
coast. In a wind like that, the disciples must have been diiven quite across to 
Gennesaret, as we know they were. To understand the causes of these sudden 
and violent tempests, we must remember that the lake lies low — six hundred 
feet lower than the ocean; that the vast and naked plateaus of the Jaulan rise 
to a great height, spreading backward to the wilds of the Hauran, and upward 
to snowy Hermon ; and the water-courses have cut out profound ravines and 
wild gorges, converging to the head of this lake, and that these act like 



THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE. 391 

gigantic funnels to draw down the cold winds from the mountains. On the 
occasion referred to we subsequently pitched our tents at the shore, and re- 
mained for three days and nights exposed to this tremendous wind. We had 
to double-pin all our tent-ropes, and frequently were obliged to hang with oul 
whole weights upon them to keep the quivering tabernacle from being carried 
up bodily into the air. No wonder the disciples toiled and rowed hard all 
that night ; and how natural their amazement and terror at the sight of Jesus 
walking on the waves ! The whole lake, as we had it, was lashed into fury ; 
the waves repeatedly rolled up to our tent-door, tumbling over the ropes with 
such violence as to carry away the tent-pins." 

In such a storm as this the disciples toiled about eight hours, 
making a little over three miles, and therefore only about half 
their voyage. It was still dark, and the heavy jesuswaiMngonthe 
tempest lay on them. Suddenly they saw what water - 
they supposed was a ghost — the appearance of a man walking the 
waves as though he would pass them — and they cried out with 
fear. Jesus spoke to them and said, " Cheer up, it is I ; be not 
afraid ! " It vms he. He had come down from the mountain 
and gone over the sea, and was walking near their vessel. When 
the excitable Peter heard his voice he said, " Lord, if it be thou, 
command me to come to thee upon the waters." Jesus did not 
command, but he permitted the attempt. Peter tried it. Going 
toward Jesus, the prodigious storm so unnerved him and shook his 
faith that Peter began to sink, and cried for help to Jesus, who 
stretched out his hand and seized him, and lifted him up with the 
kind rebuke, "O thou of little faith; wherefore didst thou doubt?" 
In their act of entering the ship the wind suddenly ceased and 
straightway the vessel was at the landing. Then the disciples, 
the crew, and the passengers fell at his feet and worshipped him, 
and said, " Of a truth thou art the Son of God." 

Here is a plain statement of a miracle. In a howling storm 
Jesus walked the waters of a lake that had been lashed by the 
scourges of a powerful hurricane through the 

i -i • -i t i e -i . Theories. 

whole night. It was not a phantasm of him. 
There was no optical delusion. Peter touched his hand. He 
went on board the vessel. He remained with a number of men, 
who had ample opportunity to examine his person. How he did 
it is not the part of a historian to say. There are latent forces in 
our humanity which now and then flash forth. There are ordi- 
nary phenomena which lie in the line of this narrative, one of 
which, namely, that a man is lighter when awake than wheo 



392 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

asleep, was noticed as early as the times of Pliny. Trench's 
theory for this is that the human consciousness as an inner centre 
works an opposing force to the centripetal force of gravity, how- 
ever unable now to overbear it. But here is something stupen- 
dous. In a great storm a man walks about on the waters, for the 
original word indicates something of a quiet promenade. Another 
man attempts to walk towards him, and succeeds so long as he 
trusts him, but sinks as soon as his faith begins to fail. Jesus 
teaches that, so far as Peter was concerned, the walking was due 
to his faith alone ; that there was in him a capability to achieve 
this dominion over nature, but that he had failed because his 
faith had failed. So far as Jesus was concerned, there was no 
force exerted on him from without, nor was there any suspension 
of the physical law of gravity : it was manifestly the power of 
his own will dominating what seem to us to be natural laws. 

If there had been any very philosophic man among his fol- 
lowers he must have seen, even at the disadvantage of too great 
prosressiveness of nearness, what seems sufficiently plain to even 
Jesus - superficial study of Jesus at this remove from 

his presence, namely, that there was a progressiveness in his whole 
inner and outer history — a growth of the inner man — to which 
there was a corresponding development of the outer life. Through 
thirty years his spiritual force seems to have been accumulating 
in private. We can hardly imagine that he was totally devoid of 
all consciousness of this progress of his soul ; nay, the whole his- 
tory shows that he knew himself, and that one of the very greatest 
difficulties of his position was to make others comprehend his 
psychical condition. At the ripening moment he entered upon 
his public career, through all of which there were repeated out- 
ilashings of the growing inner glory. These three years show 
how he became more and more luminous. At this point of his 
history he opposes the forces of his inner man to famine, to a 
mob, to a storm at sea. He stretches the assertion of his kingly 
rule further and further into the world of matter and the world 
of mind. The development of his spiritual history is rhythmic. 
These phenomena are described by men who did not perceive, and 
could not comprehend, the profound logical and poetical noume- 
non which produced them. If these things did not occur, then 
we have a more troublesome perplexity to deal with, namely, the 
miracle of the existence of a narrative so superhumanly true to 



THE TEJKD TOUR OF GALILEE. 393 

philosophy and the highest poetry — superhumanly, that is to say, 
if the historians were not relating facts. It would be easier for 
any man to walk the Atlantic through a raging storm, from New 
York to Liverpool, than to produce a book which should set forth 
a character and a history so wonderful as this of Jesus, so 
symmetrical, so accordant with our intuitions of truth, and yet 
not modelled after this of Jesus, whose historians produced it 
without type, suggestion, or original, if just such a man did not 
live and perforin just the things which they represent. 

There is no wonder, then, that the mariners and passengers, as 
well as the disciples, now, if never before, acknowledged him as 
the Son of God; that is, granted what he had claimed, the posi- 
tion of Messiah, although they held their own gross views of 
what the Messiah's functions were. They now believed that he 
was the One Anointed to deliver them from the bondage of the 
Romans. It would seem as if there now came upon them the 
conviction which had been forced upon the multitude by the 
feeding of thousands with a few loaves. 

The party landed on the plain of Gennesaret. As soon as the 
inhabitants found that he had arrived they sent messengers through 
the whole country and had the sick brought in lit- 

. \. Till -!• Intense excitement. 

ters to him. As he passed around the lake to his 
home in Capernaum there was an intense excitement everywhere. 
In all the towns and villages they brought their sick and laid them 
before him on his passage through their streets, and invalids 
begged the privilege of touching if only the hem of his garment. 
All were healed. It was a wonderful procession of beneficence. 
In the mean time some of the most fanatical of the people who 
had been fed on the previous day seemed to have lingered in the 
hope of seeing him again. They knew nothing of the extraor- 
dinary night-scene on the lake. They supposed that he may have 
retired for private devotion, but would make his appearance 
during the day. But not finding him, and knowing that there had 
been but one vessel on the lake yesterday, and that in the fearful 
storm the disciples could not have returned and taken him, they 
fell back on the only natural conjecture, namely, that he had 
walked around the edge of the lake by Bethsaida to Capernaum. 
When, therefore, vessels from Tiberias passed near, they hailed 
them and took shipping for Capernaum, seeking Jesus and more 
bread. 



394 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

That these people were not the best of the multitude who had 

been fed in the wilderness, appears from their persecuting Jesua 

T ,_ - . with their presence when he would fain have been 

Capernaum. John xvi. . x 

rid of them, because they did not follow him for 
religious instruction, but for material considerations. They hoped 
that he was to be their Bread-king, the Messiah, to reign and feed 
his people. Their hearts and consciences had all gone to stomach. 
They lived in a dream, in which many a lazy soul to this day laps 
itself, that there is "a good time coming" when men shall have 
plenty to eat and nothing to do. They were the Millerites or 
Adventists of old. We must remember this, to make the address 
of Jesus at all comprehensible. He speaks what they could not 
understand, while he utters profound truths which all receptive 
spirits will find instructive. 

The company of bread-seekers pushed into the synagogue where 

Jesus was teaching, and sought to relieve their curiosity by the 

abrupt inquiry, "Rabbi, when did you come 

The bread-seekers. . r \ J 7 . 7 , . . 

hither? Jesus deigned no reply to this imperti- 
nence. He regarded himself as the embodiment of Truth, and 
Truth never reveals itself to crude curiosity and pruriency. He 
answers reprovingly, and then makes an utterance very deep, but 
not wholly incomprehensible even to them. " Verily, verily, I say 
to you, Ye seek me not because ye saw signs, but because ye did eat 
of the loaves and were filled. Exert yourselves, not for food 
which perishes, but for that which remains to the enduring life 
which the Son of Man gives to you, for him has God the Father 
sealed." 

They seemed to understand something of this, so far at least as 
that he meant to say that if they got material bread from him it 
would be a very incidental thing ; that he was a moral teacher, and 
that they must seek him for what their souls would gain of spiri- 
tual sustenance, which he boldly announces that he is able to 
give them ; that he is the one whom God the Father has stamped 
as genuine, and that he could give them that which nourishes the 
life which endures. Therefore they said, "What shall we do that 
we may work the works of God ? " Jesus answered them, " This 
is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent." 

Their reply was, " What sign doest thou, that we may see and 
believe thee ? what dost thou work ? Our fathers did eat manna 
in the wilderness, as it is written, ' He gave them bread from hea 



THE THIRD TOUR OF GAT.TT/FflS. 395 

ven to eat.' " These gross people, having been fed miraculously 
had forgotten the feeding and undervalued the miracle, it would 
seem, because it was a mere multiplication of ^ '. 

x _ They demand a sign. 

bread, whereas in the desert, during their wander- 
ings, their fathers had a daily shower of bread from heaven. This 
reply shows how material and sensuous were all their ideas. 

Jesus answered : " Moses did not give you the bread, but my 
Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of 
God is that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to 
the world." It was not Moses who gave the manna, but it was 
God. And that manna was but temporary, for if it remained 
over it decayed and was useless. But God sends Jesus, in whom 
the world is to have life. He evidently believed and manifestly 
taught that the life of the world was derived from himself, and 
wholly dependent on himself. It was the highest possible claim. 

There seemed to be some upspringing of faith in the hearts of 
his hearers. They said unto him, " Sir, evermore give us this 
bread." Jesus, knowing that the faith which 

. , -, t Some faith. 

depended upon miracles was a stream made by 
showers, and not flowing from a fountain, deepened his discourse 
and became more offensive to them. " I am the bread of life : 
he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on 
me shall never thirst. But I said unto you that ye have even seen 
and failed to believe. The whole that the Father gives me will 
come to me, and him that comes to me I will not cast out. For 
I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will 
of Him who sent me, which is, that of the whole which He has 
given me I should not lose from, but should raise it up in the 
final day. For this is the will of the Father, that .every one who 
sees the Son and believes on him may have lasting life, and 
that I should raise him up in the final day." 

This profound speech seems to imply that as bread is the nutri- 
ment of. the outward and physical life, so Jesus is the nutriment 
of the spiritual life ; that as the body which does not receive 
food into itself, and assimilate that food with itself, will perish, 
so the soul which fails to receive and assimilate Jesus, which must 
mean the spirit and teachings of Jesus, will also perish ; that 
there is no lasting life for those who do not derive it from Jesus. 

The assertion that he came down from heaven, by which he 
claimed a relation to the spiritual world quite distinct from and 



396 SECOND AND THEED PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

superior to that of other men, was an offence to the Pharisaic 
leaders, who started the murmur among the people : " Is not this 

Jesus again offends Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father also we 
the Pharisees. have known ? How then says he, ' I came down 

from heaven ? ' " They had been familiar with Joseph and with 
Jesus as plain mechanics working in a humble shop, or going 
about doing the usual work of carpenters. That such a man 
should claim knowledge of a previous existence in heaven, and a 
voluntary coming from heaven to earth, all which Jesus certainly 
did claim, was to them a stumbling-block. 

The reply of Jesus was, " Murmur not among yourselves. No 

man can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw 

him : and I will raise him up in the last day. It 

His reply to them. . . . \ * 

is written m the prophets, ' And they shall all be 
taught of God.' * Every one who has heard and has learned of 
the Father comes unto me. Not that any one hath seen the 
Father, except he who is from the Father: he has seen God. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believes has lasting life. 
I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat the manna in the 
wilderness and have died. This is the bread that comes down 
from heaven, that any one may eat of it and not die. I am the 
living bread which came down from heaven ; if any one eat of 
my bread he shall live forever. The bread which I shall give for 
the life of the world is my flesh." Here Jesus explicitly teaches 
that God co-operates with him in his mission, so that every one 
who has any right thoughts and feelings from God has the moral 
preparation necessary to receive Jesus. Not that any one has seen 
God except Jesus himself, but he implicitly says that he has seen 
God. God gave perishable bread in the desert for the temporary 
sustentation of the temporary lives of their fathers, but now God 
gives living bread from heaven, even Jesus. 

This language is evidently highly symbolical of a deeply pro- 
found conviction of Jesus. He connected the welfare of man- 
kind with himself, and with himself after death. Flesh cannot 
be eaten until the animal is dead ; but then that flesh, having lost 
its life, is on the way to decay : but Jesus says his flesh is alive 
when eaten. The words in the original are so arranged as to ex- 
press this weightily. Then there can be no doubt as to his con- 

* In 3uch passages as the remarkable i pare Isa. liv. 13, and Jerem. 
one in Joel ii 26, 29, with which com- | 34. 



THE THIRD TOUR OF GALILEE. 397 

viction that he should die ; that after death he should be alive 
again ; and that then faith in him should be the life of men, and 
that only by faith in him could men have lasting life, and that 
souls that did not receive him should perish, just as bodies perish 
that do not receive material food into themselves. 

Then the Jews strove among themselves and said, " How can 
this man give us his flesh to eat ? " Perhaps some had glimpses 
of a profound spiritual meaning. Jesus confirms 

*■ *- ° Their puzzle. 

their idea of "eating" by a positive averment. 
" Yerily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
of Man, and drink his blood, ye have not lasting life in you. He 
who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has lasting life, and I 
will raise him up at the final day. For my flesh is truly food, and 
my blood is truly drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my 
blood dwells in 'me and I in him. As the living Father has sent 
me, and I live on account of the Father, so he who eats me, he 
also shall live on account of me. Such is the bread which came 
down from heaven : not as the fathers did eat, and have died : he 
who eats this bread shall live forever." 

This is very spiritual or very gross, and to each hearer it must 
have seemed, as now to each reader it does seem, either one or the 
other, according to his moral state of receptivity. To Jesus, from 
all we now know of his character, it could have been only an ex- 
pression in human language of his most delicate perceptions of 
most spiritual and sublime and important truths. No one could 
truthfully utter these words without believing that the existence 
of all souls depended upon himself, and that his life was depend- 
ent upon the continued existence of God and upon nothing else, 
so that he is virtually the God of humanity. The soul that does 
not somehow partake of him is as surely going to destruction as 
the body that does not somehow partake of food and drink is go- 
ing to destruction. He makes this statement so strong that while 
the Jews are discussing the possibility he cuts them short with an 
emphatic statement of the necessity. That which is eaten is taken 
into the absorbing and circulating organs of the body and assimi- 
lated. That seems to be the reigning idea throughout this speech, 
not the grossness of mastication, but the fineness of assimilation. 

All this discourse took place in the synagogue in Capernaum. 
It was not only offensive to the Jews, but also to many of the 
hangers-on of his disciples, those who followed him from genera. 



398 SECOND AND THIRD PASSOVER IN THE LDJE OF JESUS. 

motives or for sinister purposes. They said, " This is a hard say- 
ing; who can listen to it?" Jesus knew how they felt, perhaps 
heard what they said. He replied, " Does this" offend you ? What 
if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before ? 
It is the spirit that gives life ; the flesh profits nothing : the 
words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there 
are some of you who do not believe." It seemed to them some- 
thing like impiety which he was uttering in saying that he came 
down from heaven. He startles them with the intimation that it 
is possible they may yet have ocular proof of his ascending. He 
declares again his pre-existence. In speaking to his disciples he 
gives a spiritual turn to the words he had uttered, and broad- 
ens the spiritual significance of that speech by declaring that his 
physical man, his body, could not be profitable, but that it is the 
spirit which gives life, the spirit animates the body, and spirit- 
ual recognitions alone are valuable. 

John declares that Jesus had insight into the spiritual con- 
dition of the men about him, and knew who did and who did not 
Jesus sifts Ms follow- believe his words, and who it was that should 
tm - betray him. He saw that he weaned from him 

the utter materialists and traditionalists and secularists. Many of 
his followers turned away from him forever. Jesus said to his 
twelve chosen friends, whom he had selected to propagate his 
principles, " Do you also wish to go away ? " Simon Peter, gen- 
erally spokesman, answered, " Sir, to whom shall we go ? Yon 
have the words of lasting life, and we believe and have found out 
that you are the Holy One of God." There was a great faith 
based on a great spiritual intelligence. He saw that words were 
more powerful than acts. Deeds die. Words live. The feeding 
of five thousand people was a small thing as compared with the 
utterance of a great truth on which the soul could feed and grow. 
Jesus said, " Have not I chosen you twelve ? and one of you is a 
traitor." John says, after the fact, that Jesus spoke of Judas 
Iscariot, son of Simon of Kerioth. Jesus may have told John 
that he did mean this Judas, or John may have simply afterward 
recollected when Jesus was betrayed that this speech had been 
made and must have referred to Judas. 

This is the closing passage in the history of the second year of 
the ministry of Jesus. He had aroused the Pharisees, had sifted 
his followers, and had given training to his tried Apostles. 



PART V. 

FROM THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE ENSUING 
FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER, A.D. 29— ABOUT SIX MONTHS. 



CHAPTER L 



UNSETTLED. 



It does not appear that Jesus went up to Jerusalem to the Pass- 
over of this year, but it is supposed that his disciples did. There 
must have been multitudes at the great national 
celebration who had seen or heard of the feeding; . ^ esus remams 

° in Capernaum. 

of the five thousand, and who knew the intense 
desire of the people to make Jesus king. Such things would be 
much talked of and most eagerly listened to. The intense inter- 
est excited by these reports probably hastened the determination 
of the hierarchicparty to destroy Jesus. Jesus knew it, and ceased 
to travel in Judaea proper, confining himself to Galilee. 

Soon after the Passover a deputation from the Pharisees and 
Scribes, being charged to ascertain some ground of accusation 
against Jesus, were dogging his steps and watch- M .. m M , 
ing his movements; and spies of that character vii. The deputar 
never fail to find in the most spotless life some- tion from the 
thing to which they can take exception. Pharisees. 

In addition to the Scriptures, which contained the moral law in 
writing, the Pharisees endeavored to bind upon the consciences 
of the people certain unwritten traditions of the 
elders, oral precepts, which they attributed to the 
assistants of Moses. After the time of Jesus these were collected 



400 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

into a book, consisting of two parts : the Mishna, the text of the 
supposed original precepts of the elders, and the Gemara, the 
comments on the text by the chief rabbies — the whole being 
called The Talmud. 

Among the requirements of these traditions were many which 
obliged the Jews to wash often, and to wash many things, and to 
wash in peculiar ways. Mark has a note to that effect, inserted 
parenthetically in his history : " For the Pharisees and all Jews, 
except they wash their hands often, eat not, holding the tradition 
of the elders, and on coming from the market, if they sprinkle 
not, they eat not. And many other things there are which they 
have received to hold, as baptisms of cups and of pots and of 
vessels of brass." On coming from any public assembly it was in 
accordance with this ceremonial law that the whole body be 
washed, because it could not be known what defilement may have 
been contracted by contact with the common people. When this 
deputation of spies saw that Jesus and his disciples paid no regard 
to these requirements they catechized him, saying, " Why do your 
disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat 
bread with unwashed hands ? " The plain intimation is, that the 
Master was held responsible for at least the known and unrebuked 
acts of his disciples. 

The stern reply of Jesus was, " Well has Isaiah prophesied of 

you hypocrites when he said (representing Jehovah as speaking), 

4 This people honor me with their lips, but their 

Jesus rebukes k ear t i s f ar from me ; in vain do they worship 
th.6 Pharisees. 

me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of 

men. 5 For you, leaving the commandment of God, hold the tra- 
dition of men. Well do you reject the commandment of God 
that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, ' Honor 
thy father and thy mother, and he who resisteth father or mother 
let him end by death.' But you say that if a man shall say to his 
father or mother, i Corban (which means a gift), by whatever thou 
mightest be profited by me,' ye suffer him no longer to do anything 
for his father or his mother, making the word of God of none 
effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered. And 
many such like things ye do." 

This was a severe rebuke, and struck at the sorest spot of Pha- 
risaism. The hold of the hierarchic clique upon the people lay 
in continuing in them a superstitious regard for the " traditions." 



UNSETTLED. 401 

So long as the people were traditionists and ritualists, and the 
Pharisees held in their hands the interpretation of the tradition 
and the arrangement of the ritual, they could lord it over the con- 
sciences t of the populace. And we see in this rebuke of Jesus 
that churchism is the same in all ages of the world. The spies 
from Jerusalem indirectly rebuked Jesus, not because he did not 
regard personal cleanliness, but because he did not conform to the 
minute directions of the ceremonial laws which had been built up 
by the doctors of the law. In this they were hypocrites. They 
had made canons which were contrary to God's express command- 
ments. They had been described by Isaiah, and a telling passage 
was quoted against them. Jesus cites a case in which the terrible 
injury of churchism is seen. According to the law of God, a man 
was to honor his parents. But these " churchmen " taught that if 
a man said " Corban " over any property, it was thenceforth de- 
voted to "the church," and no matter how much the parents might 
be in need, this property was interdicted and alienated to " the 
church." Jesus regarded this as simply horrible. Nothing taken 
from a needy father or mother could be made acceptable to God 
by being devoted to what are called sacred purposes. 

Then calling to the crowd that was near, Jesus said, "Hear and 
understand: There is nothing from without the man which enter- 
ing into him can defile him ; but the things which 
come out of him, those are what defile the man." man 
The comparison of this address to the multitude 
with the speech to the Pharisees shows to us, that Jesus would not 
be understood as undervaluing purity in any sense, as not abol- 
ishing any law which God had given, but that purity was not to 
be attained and maintained by outward washings, and by observ- 
ance of what meats a man should eat, but rather by keeping the 
soul, the source of life, all clean. But this is expressed in a par- 
able. 

His disciples told him that he had offended the Pharisees by his 
speech to them. He answered, " Every plant which my heavenly 
Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone; 
they are blind leaders. And if a blind man lead a blind man 
both shall fall into the ditch." Which reply seems to mean that 
whatever might come to him from so doing, he should not hesitate 
to root np such noxious weeds as these raise teachers, but seems 
also to implv that no special violence would be requisite. Do yon 
26 



402 THE THIRD PASSOVEE TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

see a blind man leading a blind man ? There is a pit in theii 
path. Why should one push them forward 1 They are going to 
destruction of themselves. So of these false teachers, and, alas! 
of their followers. 

But when they reached the house, Peter, who still had tradi- 
tionary ideas, and regarded the manner of eating as not an indif- 
ferent subject, asked his Master to explain to the 

Jesus expams ^i sc ip]_ es ^i s parable about the food. And he 
his saying. x x 

said, " Are you yet also without understanding % " 

They had been so near him, had so long heard his expressions of 
thought that they should have been able at once to know what he 
meant, and not compel him to go into a detailed explanation, 
which, however, he does not withhold. " Do you not understand 
that whatsoever enters the mouth goes into the stomach, and is 
evacuated into the draught? But the things coming out of the 
mouth come from the heart, and they profane the man. For out 
of the heart come forth evil purposes, murders, adulteries, forni- 
cations, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies: these are the things 
that profane a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not." 
This is consistent with all his teachings, that a man's purity must 
be that of the character interfused through the whole life. 

It was quite apparent now that the Jewish ecclesiastical au- 
thorities meditated extreme measures. The labors of Jesus and 
his Apostles had been exhaustive. There was a 
Matt. xv.; Mark fggjf^ ordeal in advance of them: Jesus mani- 

vu. In Phoenicia. _ _ . , , . 

iestly saw that, whether it was apparent to the 
others or not. His field of operations was daily more and more 
circumscribed by his enemies. He could not " walk " in Judaea 
nor in Galilee without being beset by his ecclesiastical foes. 
Capernaum could no longer be a retreat to him. It would seem 
that in view of these things Jesus meditated a season of retire- 
ment, and so withdrew his disciples up towards the confines of 
Phoenicia, designated in Matthew and Mark by the names of the 
two principal cities, Tyre and Sidon. 

It has been a question whether Jesus ever crossed the boundary 
of his native country during his public ministry. It is not neces- 
sarily implied in the words of Matthew and Mark, "into the 
coasts," "into the borders of Tyre and Sidon." The word may 
be as well translated "towards," or "unto," as "into." That 
he had declared his ministry to be confined to the Jewish people 



UNSETTLED. 403 

does not touch the question, because he was seeking a place where 

he might for a season have recuperative repose, which he could 

better find in a heathen country in which he did not intend to 

preach. But now the question has been settled by the recently 

discovered Codex Sinaiticus, the text of which, in Mark vii. 31, 

is, " And again going from the coasts of Tyre he went through 

Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of 

Decapolis." 

Of a woman of this country one of the most touching of all 

the stories in the New Testament history is narrated. Jesus 

sought retirement. He went into a house and 

took measures to prevent persons from seeking . . e yro " ce " 

nician woman, 
him. But he could not be hid. Some report of 

his power had crossed the frontier and reached the ears of a wo- 
man in those coasts. She now heard that Jesus, a descendant of 
that great Jewish king who was the wonderful Solomon's father, 
a worker of many cures, the most beneficent of prophets, was in 
the neighborhood. Her daughter was strangely and fearfully 
afflicted, and her countrymen, in common with the Jews, believed 
in demoniacal possession. She had nothing but this great afflic- 
tion to commend her to the attention of Jesus. Everything was 
against her. Her nationality was an offshoot of that base Canaan- 
itish stock that God had aforetime doomed to utter destruction, 
but which had been spared by the weakness of the ancestors of 
the people to whom Jesus belonged. She was a Syro-Phoenician. 
Then, in her creed, she was a pagan — a Greek. So she had in 
her veins the blood of three hated races — Greek, Syrian, and 
Phoenician : and her religion was against her in her appeal to the 
Jewish prophet. 

But her grief and love for her daughter transcended all such 
considerations. She sought Jesus and found him, and fell at his 
feet, and besought him, saying : " O sir, David's H 
Son, pity me ! for my daughter is grievously de- 
monized ! " For the first time in his career Jesus seemed un- 
touched by the plea of suffering. He paid no attention to the 
suppliant at his feet. He answered her not a word. But she 
followed him, prosecuting her pleadings. At length the disciples 
put in a word in her behalf. " Dismiss her : for she cries after 
us." That this word was in her favor is manifest from the reply 
of Jesus, but it seems to have come rather from a desire to 



404 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

be rid of her importunity than from any special regard for the 
poor petitioner. The reply was another discouragement to the 
agonized mother : " I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel." This reminded them of the limit of their own 
commission, and perhaps recalled to them the fact that Jesus had 
made no cures of any heathen. It did not positively say that he 
would not grant their request and hearken to her prayer, but that 
if he did so it would transcend the limits of his mission and 
theirs. To the woman it must have sounded like a fresh repulse. 

She had, however, made her daughter's case her own, with such 
motherly sympathy that when she opened her petitions to Jesue 
it was in the pathetic appeal, " Pity me ! " as if she were the 
sufferer. Such love is unconquerable. She could not go back to 
her daughter with no relief. The picture of the paroxysms of the 
wretched patient goaded her maternal heart to utmost effort. 

Again she worshipped him. Again she cried : " O sir, help 
me ! " As if she had said: " I cannot go wholly unhelped : if my 
daughter cannot be utterly cured, do something for me ! I leave 
it to your wisdom and goodness to decide what." Jesus again re- 
pulsed her by a speech embodying a picture from domestic life. 
His first word to her was : " It is not a fair thing to take the 
bread of the children and throw it away (waste it) on the little 
dogs." 

All the history of Jesus shows the fineness of his organization. 

It is a remembrance of this which must help us here. "With 

what tone and look did Jesus utter this speech ? 

Jesus tries her To f anC y t ^ at k e mean t that this anxious mother 

at his feet was a dog, would be a wretched f orget- 
fulness of the whole spirit of Jesus thus far manifested in his 
words and works, especially in his treatment of women. He did 
not mean that. The woman knew, and the disciples knew, that 
the Jews were accustomed to apply the unhandsome epithet of 
" dog " to all heathens. He never could have called any woman 
a " whelp." None but the grossest of all gross men ever apply 
this word to any woman, and then they conceive her to be the 
basest of all base women. There is nothing here to justify this 
interpretation. He was simply reminding them of what the 
Pharisees and Scribes would say if he should help this woman, 
and also presenting to them in concrete words the abstract but 
vigorous prejudices of their own hearts against all peoples whe 



UNSETTLED. 405 

were not of their nation, as if he had said : " You know that the 
Jews are Jehovah's peculiar children, and that this woman is a 
dog of a Canaanite ; would you have your Master outrage all 
decency and orthodoxy by helping her f " The coldest of most 
unpoetic historians might fancy that a faint smile of pity for their 
narrowness passed over his now benignant features as he uttered 
these gently satirical words. 

There was something in that look which stimulated the poor 
pleader's fainting hope. In the light of the smile which fell on 
her eyes, her heart — a woman's and a mother's — seemed to detect 
a warmth from the inmost soul of Jesus which escaped the eyes 
of the disciples, and which could not possibly be transferred to a 
written narrative. Quick-witted, persistent, faithful, she caught 
at the very word " little-dogs." In the original it is only one 
word. He did not employ the harshest name for those worth- 
less, vicious, vagabond canine prowlers through oriental villages. 
It is the only passage, so far as I can recollect, in the Bible his- 
tories, in which occurs any allusion to dogs which is not much 
against that animal. The word here is a diminutive, softening 
the meaning, not intensifying the contempt uousness. And it is a 
home scene. The little dogs are in the house ; they are men • 
tioned in close connnection with " the children." It was a hint 
to her faith. She caught it, and replied with admirable spirit and 
celerity. She did not deny what Jesus affirmed, but gave it a 
most sudden turn in her own favor. She did not degrade her- 
self. She did not allow herself to be worthless as a dog. It was 
the love for her daughter which gave her strength to hold herself 
up while her self-respect was thus apparently tortured by another 
and held down by herself. She loved another better than she 
loved herself. She said : " True, sir ; but even the dogs eat of 
the crumbs falling from the table of their masters." She assented 
to the truth of the general proposition of Jesus, but argued that 
so far from being a reason for her rejection it contained a reason 
for her acceptance. She does not make a demand for even the 
crumbs, but she pleads that she may not be driven from even 
them. 

Simon Peter must have resembled Martin Luther in many of 
his characteristics. When Luther read this passage he burst out 
so that you can almost hear the clapping of his hands in his 
written syllables: "Was not that a master-stroke? She snares 



±06 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



Jesus in his own words ! " With what delight the followers of 
Jesus must have regarded the swift beauty of this most finely 
delicate repartee. How could Peter contain him- 



Jesus 
ates holy wit. 



self ? How he must have glanced from the face 



of the Pagan at her prayer to the sad face of the 
wearied but good Jesus, who was gazing down into her eyes, to 
«^ee the effect of his speech. And when the reply came, the most 
spiritual hon mot on record, if the exuberant Peter did not flow 
over with gesticulations of delight, Jesus broke into applause at 
the wit of the speech and the humility and faith of the utterer. 
" O woman ! great your faith ! Be it unto you even as you de- 
sire ! " The prophet that at first refused to listen to her, and then 
repelled her, and then seemed to insult her, now that her faith 
has triumphed, gives her all. " Your utmost wish in its very form 
is granted." She rose, withdrew, and found on her return that 
her daughter had recovered while she lay pleading at the fead and 
holy Prophet's wearied and dusty feet. 

There was no more rest for Jesus. He could not be quiet in 

Judaea, nor in Galilee, nor in a heathen country. He was not 

disposed to hasten any crisis ; but if he must 

The Decapolis. WQrk - t mugt be j n j^g own countrv# He resolved 

rii viii'* to return. From Tyre he went northward " through 

Sidon," * probably going by a circuit through the 
mountainous country which lies between Tyre and Lebanon, where 
he might have opportunity for solemn retirement and deep dis- 
course with his disciples. But we have no itinerary of this jour- 
ney, lie may have crossed from the Phoenician boundaries di- 
rectly to Ilermon, and down by the east bank of the Jordan towards 
the lake, and thus have gone through the midst of Decapolis. 
Nor do we know exactly what part of Decapolis was thus visited. 
This name, which means " Ten Cities," and describes a region, 
was east of the Jordan, except a little territory near the western 
bank, at the southern end of the lake, and called Scythopolis. 
Upon the conquest of Syria by the Romans (b.c. 65) these ten 
cities were rebuilt, colonized, and allowed certain peculiar munici- 
pal privileges, making an assemblage of little principalities some- 
what after the manner of the Hanse Towns of Germany. Various- 



* Ata SiSdn'o? is the text in the Codex 
SinaiL, and is now the accepted reading, 
behig well authenticated, Tischendorf, 



Alford, Tragelles, Meyer, Lachmann, 
and others following it. 



UNSETTLED. 



407 



lists of names are given. Perhaps the larger number of authori- 
ties agree on the following : namely, Damascus, now the oldest 
city in the world ; Scythopolis, whose site is well known ; Gadara; 
Pella ; Philadelphia, which was the ancient Rabboth Ammon ; 




Gerasa, " whose rains are the most magnificent in Palestine;" 
Canatha or Keneth ; Raphana ; Hippos ; and Dion. * These 
cities were inhabited mainly by a pagan population, and in the 
days of Jesus the whole region was populous and prospero as. 
It was not long before the people began to bring their sick to 



* •* Cellarius thinks that Csesarea, 
Philippi, and Gergasa should be substi- 
tuted for Damascus and Raphana in 
this list, which is taken from Pliny {Nat. 
Hist, v. 16). It is true that Pliny is 
the only writer who extends Decapolis 



so far north as to include Damascus, 
which city would seem to be excluded 
by Josephus (who, however, does not 
furnish a list), since he calls Scythopo- 
lis 'the largest of them.' " — McClintock 
& Strong's Cyclopaedia. 



408 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

the great Healer. Matthew describes the rapid and frequent 
cures by such words as these : " And great multitudes came untc 

^ * * him, having with them lame, blind, maimed, dumb, 
Cure of the deaf ' & . . ' ; , . - 

stammerer. ancl manv others, and cast them down at his feet ; 

and he healed them." Mark singles out a case 
which he describes in his peculiarly graphic style. Among the 
invalids was one who was deaf and a stammerer, and they brought 
him that Jesus might lay hands on him. But in this particular 
case he did not choose to exert his healing power in that way. He 
took the patient privately from the multitude, and put his fingers 
into the man's ears, and having spitten, he touched his tongue, and 
sighed, as in prayer, and said, "Ephphatha," an Aramaic word, 
which Mark translates " Be opened." And his ears were opened, 
and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plainly. 
Jesus charged him and his friends that they should not publish 
this transaction. But they disobeyed him, and in proportion to 
the earnestness of his charge was the zeal with which they made 
the cure known. 

Each reader of this passage must have his own opinion of the 
motives of the great Worker. This much we have already learned, 
that Jesus had no selfish motives, was not fanatic nor timid, was 
neither a magician nor a charlatan. Whatever else be denied, 
the purely sincere deepness of his nature must have become ap- 
parent. He had no tricks and no evasions. We must always 
recollect the circumstances under which an act was performed, 
and the character of the actor. Jesus was now in a region in- 
habited principally by pagans, among whom, however, were many 
Jews. And then the ruling passion with Jesus was an intense 
desire to do good to their souls through the bodies of men. Now, 
unless we could have the spiritual penetration of this great 
Teacher, and see each particular case as it rose, we could not 
fairly criticize the variations which he made in the style of his 
mighty deeds ; in that sometimes he merely spoke, sometimes he 
touched, sometimes he sent the patient off to wash in a certain 
pool, sometimes he healed in the heart of the crowd, sometimes, 
as in this case, took the sufferer into privacy. Although we can- 
not perceive the reason in the patient, we may, as in this case, 
perceive some reason in the circumstances. It would have 
been contrary to his plans and the spirit of his life to excite a 
furor in this pagan population; it would have been every way 



UNSETTLED. 409 

injurious to Jew arid Gentile, to allow to be created for himself 
the reputation of magician. He took the man into privacy, he 
prayed, he touched him, he commanded ; it was done on an instant. 
The Jews said, " He hath done all things well ; " the pagans glo 
rified the God of Israel. 

For three days Jesus was with this mixed multitude, healing and 
teaching, the crowd probably constantly growing 
as the report of the miracles spread. 

At the close of the third day Jesus called his disciples and 
said, " I have compassion on the multitude, because already they 
have continued with me three days and have noth- - 

-, T .-it ii Feeding of foai 

mg to eat: and I am unwilling to send them tilousaild> 
away fasting lest they fall in the way." They 
could not readily cross the lake, nor visit the towns, but would 
be compelled to return to their mountain homes by way of the 
passes through which they had followed Jesus. The disciples 
6eemed to have forgotten his great miracle in feeding the five 
thousand, or they may have thought that he would not repeat 
60 signal a creative act, or they may have chosen to let him 
indicate how the wants of all these people should be relieved. 
Their reply was, " Whence should we have so many loaves in the 
desert as to fill so great a multitude ? " Jesus said, " How many 
have you ? " They answered, " Seven, and a few little fishesP 
Jesus commanded the multitude to be seated, and taking the 
food he gave thanks, and divided it, and gave it to his disciples, 
and the disciples to the multitude. They all ate and were satis- 
fied. And they took up of the fragments seven baskets full. 
And the number of eaters was about four thousand men, besides 
children and women. 

The narrative here is very similar to that of the previous won- 
derful feeding of five thousand people. Perhaps, in some par- 
ticulars, they grew alike before they were written; but there 
are points of difference. The assembly here was largely heathen, 
the need was more pressing, the number of eaters was smaller, 
the number of loaves was larger, and the number of baskets of 
broken meat gathered after the meal was smaller than in the 
former instance. It is also to be observed that the word trans- 
lated "basket" is not the same as in the former instance. There, 
as the note on p. 388 shows, it meant the wallet which a Jew 
ordinarily carried on his journeys. Here it means a fish basket 



410 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

That these two words mean different things is apparent from the 
fact that they are not confounded in the two narratives, and from 
the other fact, that when Jesus afterward called the memory of his 
disciples to the two instances he discriminates in the use of the 
words, keeping the former to the first and the latter to the second 
instance. 

One cannot help pausing to say that, if these narratives had 
been fabrications, the author would have put this for the first and 
the other for the second miracle ; for obviously it is a more splen- 
did thing to feed five thousand on five loaves, and take up twelve 
baskets of fragments, than to feed four thousand on seven loaves, 
and save only seven baskets of fragments. Certainly it is not the 
manner of romancers and impostors to relate the greater exploits 
first, and then parade the smaller deeds of their heroes. If a 
writer of fiction had had this case in hand he would certainly have 
represented at least ten thousand eaters, and have reduced the 
number of loaves to two, if not to one. We may not comprehend 
all the physical and spiritual phenomena in this history, but it 
certainly sounds as if reported by an honest eye-witness. 

Jesus dismissed the multitude and took ship, perhaps a ship 

which the disciples kept in readiness for his accommodation, and 

went to the western side of the lake, to the coasts 

Dalmanutlia. f Magadan or Magdala as Matthew reports, to 
Matt, xv., xvi.; DaL mai mtha as tne more exact Mark records. 

Mark viii. ; Luke „. , , ._. . , -^ n . ..... 

^ lne probability is that Dalmanutha was a village 

near Magdala, the latter being generally identified 
with El Mejdel, a poor hamlet near the lake on the south side of 
the plain of Gennesaret. 

"Whether he remained here a short time and encountered the 
Pharisaic party, or returned to Capernaum and there had this de- 
cisive interview with them, has been a question. 
I incline to believe that this fresh trial took place 
m Capernaum. It was obviously premeditated and planned. 
Dalmanutha was so obscure a place that we cannot think they 
would have expected him there. Wherever they did meet, it was 
where the Pharisees and Sadducees lay in wait for him, and this 
would most naturally be at his home in Capernaum. This is not a 
matter of great importance. It was on the western shore of the 
lake. It was in Galilee. It is noticed that now for the first time 
the Sadducees, the " rationalists " and infidels of their day, had 



UNSETTLED. 4:11 

united themselves with the Pharisees, the Puritans of that day, tc 
put Jesus to a new trial. Here was a great combination of pow- 
erful influences. The Sadducees were the court party. Herod 
was a Sadducee. They were the refined and "liberal." The 
progress of Jesus thus far, if it had attracted their attention, had 
simply provoked their contempt. But he had begun to be anta- 
gonistic to them. He was rising from the position of a mere u or- 
thodox " Jewish sectary, and they were ready to attack him with 
all the illiberality for which professed "liberals" have always 
been noted. 

Now on the return of Jesus to his home, a return which seems 
to have the appearance of giving his own people a fresh oppor- 
tunity to accept him and his doctrine, these par- 

, , ,.,., , . n . -, A sign demanded. 

ties, whose hostility was deepening and widening, 
came to him demanding " a sign from heaven." The Jewish peo- 
ple had studied their prophets with a perpetual tendency to mate- 
rialism. In their minds such passages as Daniel vii. 13 had always 
a sensuous interpretation. They pressed Jesus for a sign in the 
heavens, which could be seen of all men. They seemed disposed 
to drive him to some act or word which should be an acknowledg- 
ment that he was a false Messiah : certainly the Sadducees held 
that opinion; but if a trae Messiah, which the Pharisees may 
secretly have wished, then he must be forced into a position which 
should make him the powerful head of a rebellion which was to 
break the Poman yoke and render the Jews the rulers of the 
world. Thus, for most opposite reasons, the Sadducees and the 
Pharisees conspired. 

His reply was, " When you see a cloud rise out of the west, 
immediately ye say 'A shower is coming,' and so it is : and when 
the south wind is blowing you say, c There will 
be heat,' and it cometh to pass. You hypocrites, ep J ° 
you can discern the face of the earth and of the sky, and how 
is it that you do not discern this time ? Yes, and why even of 
yourselves do you not judge what is right? For when you are 
going with your adversary to a magistrate, give diligence while on 
the way to be delivered from him, lest he drag you to the judge, 
and the judge deliver you to the officer, and the officer cast you 
into prison. I tell you you shall not come out thence until you 
have paid the last mite." And then he groaned in spirit and said, 
"A wicked and adulterous generation seeks a sign. No sign shall 



412 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

be given it but the sign of Jonah." Saying this he left them, and 
the words and tone of the history indicate that he abandoned 
these men forever to the hardness of their hearts. They had 
finally rejected him. They might have had most beautiful use? 
oat of his life, but they would not. 

The parabolic language of Jesus seems plain to us. They were 
weather prophets. When the wind came from the sea on the 
west, they predicted rain ; when it came from 
weatherpropliets the burning deserts on the south, they predicted 
heat. The laws in the physical world acted with 
such regularity that a certain state of phenomena being given, 
another condition of affairs would inevitably take place. They 
ought to have known the signs of spiritual as well as those of phy- 
sical meteorology. His life was, in the nation, what west wind or 
south wind was in the land. They ought to have been wise 
enough to fore-read coining events by what was obvious before 
their eyes. One is not more difficult to understand than the 
other; and if men become learned in one department and re- 
main ignorant in the other, it is most manifestly because they do 
not choose to study the latter. If in their ignorance they pre- 
tend to knowledge, they are hypocrites. 

And he brings the interest of what he calls " this time v close 

home to them. He represents himself as plaintiff in a case in 

which his nation was defendant, and himself as 

fendaS;^ ^ **" dra gg m g tnem to tne judgment-seat of the right- 
ful ruler. It was a matter of the gravest moment 
to them that they should make peace with him. It was no time 
to be indulging in study of ordinary phenomena. The nation 
was being pulled forward to its crisis, to its judgment, and he 
warned them that unless they made peace with him they should 
soon suffer the extreme fate of nations by being utterly destroyed. 
They had become spiritual adulterers, which means, in Jewish 
phraseology, contaminated with heathenism. To such heathens 
there would be vouchsafed only the sign of the prophet Jonah. 
Let them ponder that. He gave them no explanation, he sug- 
gested no application of the reference to the case in hand. He 
left them, and crossed the lake. 

In the excitement of this interview and the haste of the de- 
parture the disciples forgot to carry provisions with them. The 
thoughts of Jesus also were upon other things. He saw how 



UNSETTLED. . 413 

jKwi\iall} r even vet his disciples entered into his grand life of self 

abnegation. They were yet very secular; they were yet some 

how hoping for sensuous Messianic displays. 

Their thoughts and desires lingered with the flesh- ^ T ^? leaven of 

pots of the Egypt they were leaving. He said to 

them, very solemnly: "See and beware of the leaven of the 

Pharisees and of the Sadducees and of Herod." That is, keep 

yourselves from hypocrisy, and skepticism, and secularism. The} 

are contagious. They spread in the heart and in a community 

like leaven. 

How blind they still were is apparent from their comments 
among themselves. They said : " It is because we took not loaves." 
Jesus perceived, it and said : " Why do you reason among your- 
selves, O Little-Faiths ! because you have not loaves ? Do you 
not yet perceive ? Do you not yet understand ? Have you your 
heart hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? and, having 
ears, do you not hear? When I broke the five loaves among 
five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye 
up ? " They answered : " Twelve." "And when the seven loaves 
among the four thousand, how many baskets full ? " They said : 
" Seven." And Jesus said : " How is it that you do not under- 
stand that I did not speak concerning bread, when I warned 
you of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?" 
At last their dense stupidity was penetrated, and they perceived 
that he had not warned them to break from all communication 
with these sects, but to guard against their wicked doctrines. 

They were now at Bethsaida-Julias, in Perea. Matthew re- 
cords (xi. 21) that Jesus said that he had wrought many mighty 
works in this Bethsaida ; but the only one dis- 
tinguished and recorded is the cure of a blind Bethsaida, on 
man. Mark tells the story. He is the historian ^ e ™^-™f f 

tiie lake jVIirk 

who seems specially attracted by what has the viii 
characteristic of progressiveness, and the cure of 
the blind man was of that kind. He did not seem to know much 
of Jesus, or to take any special interest in him, or to have any no- 
ticeable degree of faith in him, or to have any ardent desire for 
a cure. In this case it was the friends who seemed to have a 
great zeal in his behalf. They brought him to Jesus, and be- 
sought that he might be cured. Jesus took the blind man by the 
hand and led him out of the village. What conversation they 



414 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

had is not recorded. In all the cases of his miracles we have 
studied there seems to have been an adaptation of the cure to the 
spiritual benefit of the sufferer, and some connection between hi? 
state of mind and the method of his cure. The intent was to 
develop the faith of the subject. In this case Jesus put spittle 
on the eyes of the man, and then laid his hands on him and asked 
him if he saw anything. The man, with a tone of joy, and in 
the delightful confusion of a sudden and unexpected relief, ex- 
claimed : " I see the men ; for I see them as trees, walking." 
Then Jesus laid his hands upon his eyes, and he saw clearly : he 
was thoroughly restored and saw all things plainly. The man 
seems to have lived in the country. Jesus sent him to his house, 
telling him not to return to the village. 




COPPEK SHEKEL. 



CHAPTEE II. 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 



Then Jesus and bis disciples went up towards the region of 
Caesarea Philippi. This important city was originally called 
Paueas, from a cave and a temple dedicated to n r C s e 
Pan. Philip the tetrarch enlarged and beauti- PMippi. Matt. 
fied the town, and gave it the name of Caesarea, xvi. ; Mark viii ; 
in honor of the emperor Tiberius. His own Luke 1X -' xii > 
name was afterwards added, to distinguish this 
from the Caesarea which was the Roman metropolis of Palestine, 
and was situated about half-way between Joppa and Dora, on the 
main road leading from Tyre to Egypt. Caesarea Philippi, the 
northernmost limit of the travels of Jesus, was a picturesque and 
important place, and seems to have had a number of villages de- 
pendent upon it. It was most famous as being the spot in which 
the principal source of the Jordan is found. Jesus gave the re- 
gion fresh historic interest. 

Somewhere in this region he had retired for private devotion 
when his disciples found him. It was another crisis in his life. 
The hierarchic party had greatly decreased his 

, .^ rrn i • • . -i • Another crisis. 

popularity. I hey were working against him per- 
sistently and successfully. How far they had succeeded in af- 
fecting the dispositions of his disciples was to be tested. If they 
had become so intimidated as not to be willing and ready to fol- 
low him into any extremity, then his work was a failure. He 
should be compelled to abandon his designs totally, or reorganize 
his plans and begin afresh. He had been forced from Galilee. 
He was in the tetrarchy of Philip. The lines were drawn more 
closely about him. Some movement must soon be made. He 
made it now. 

Turning to his disciples, he put the direct question : " Whom 
do men say that I am % " This was to draw from them a statement 
of their knowledge of current and popular opinions of him 




OKSABEA PHU.IPPI. 



41 6 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

They were quite frank, and replied : " Some say that you are 
John the Baptist risen from the dead ; others, Elijah ; others, Jeru- 

A test question. miah > otners > one of tne prophets." Lightfoot 

shows that the Jews believed that the pro- 
phets were to rise again at the coining of the Christ. " The 
nearer still the hingdon of heaven came, but so much the more 
did they dream of the resurrection of the prophets." It is re- 
markable that no section of the people regarded Jesus as a divine 
personage — as the Messiah, the Christ — in any high spiritual 
sense ; for had it been so the disciples would not have failed to 
report it. According to their account Jesus did not stand so high 
with the people as at the beginning of his ministry. 

The reply of the disciples is really a curious and interesting 
study. Herod was terrified, and really believed that John had 
come back from the dead to imperil him. The Court party gave 
currency to this belief, because John had emphatically declared 
that he was not the Messiah, and it was to the interest of the 
king's friends to maintain that view, namely, that this man Jesus 
was not to have Messianic honors paid him, nor in any sense be 
regarded as Messiah. Messiah was still to come. They were in- 
terested in keeping him in the future. 

There were others who noticed the extraordinary severity of 
his castigations, and they said he was Elijah, so like was he to that 
terrible prophet. 

Others noticed how he was withdrawing himself, and becoming 
more and more sad. Perhaps at this period of his ministry there 
did naturally come melancholy cadences into his speeches. He 
was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with griefs. He was 
being rejected by his own people, whom he loved, and whom he 
wished to bless. He was being driven into exile. Such melan- 
choly readily suggested the prophet of the Lamentations. 

To others he seemed only as some of the ancient prophets, not 
individually distinguishable ; so low was the estimate of most of 
the people. 

He had not then struck root into his nation generally : how 

might it be with his own family of disciples ? He determined to 

test it. It was a moment of profoundest interest 

to him and to them. The question and reply were 

to constitute a bond of perpetual union between them, or were to 

be the signal of the dissolution of this important little community. 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 



417 



Peter's solemn 
confession. 



Hdw important they were to the world they could not possibly 
have known. No very important man does know his own value. 

" But whom say ye that I am ? " 

" You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God," 
was the profoundly solemn answer of Peter. It was a profession 
of faith ; it was a confession of everything ; it was 
an act of worship. He acknowledged Jesus as 
the Messiah, to the exclusion of all other claim- 
ants to that high and holy office ; he confessed him as a divine 
person ; not a son of God, but the Son of the living God, in a 
sense in which it could be applied to no other man. He does not 
report the general opinion of the body of disciples,* but per- 
forms an act of personal worship, using such forms and words as 
men who are Christians have since employed in prayer. No such 
admission had ever before been made. It embodied a Messianic 
idea loftier and broader than any other Jewish mind and heart 
had held. They believed that the Messiah, the Christ, should be 
one of the sons of men, like any other great man, and should be 
chosen and anointed, by reason of the greatness and splendors of 
his virtues, to be the deliverer of his people. But Peter ac- 
knowledged his Messiah as directly begotten of God. In his sol- 
emn phrase he did not use the word " living " to distinguish 
God, the true God, from dead idols, but to intensify the idea that 
was in the word " Son." It was not the question who God was, 
but the question who Jesus was, that Peter was answering. 

Jesus accepted the homage. Let us remind ourselves that we 
are making historical studies and not dogmatic theological asser- 
tions. The question now is, not whether Jesus 
was right or wrong, but what he thought and said 
and did. It is most obvious that at this period of 
his career he believed himself to be the Son of God in a sense 
separate and distinct from any other with which the phrase could 
be applied to other men. He was the Messiah, the Christ, the 
Sent, the Anointed. His people were looking for a temporal 



Jesus receives 
homage. 



* It is to be noticed that Peter re- 
ports the opinions of others, but when 
Jesus asked the opinion of the disci- 
ples Peter fails to give it. We do not 
know from him what it was. For him- 
self he answers, not saying "We 
think," on behalf of his fellow-disci- 

27 



pies, nor "I think that you are," etc., 
on his own behalf, but addressing him 
with the worshipping assertion, "You 
are the Christ." The state of mind in 
which this was uttered is to be consid- 
ered. 



4:18 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

ieliverer ; he was the only deliverer they should have, and he 
vvas a spiritual deliverer. With such sentiments he made his 
solemn reply to Peter : " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father in 
the heavens. And I also say to thee, Thou art Peter, and on this 
rock I will build my congregation, and the gates of Death [Hades] 
shall not prevail against it. I will give thee the keys of the king- 
dom of the heavens, and what thou shalt bind upon earth shall be 
bound in the heavens, and what thou shalt loose on earth shall be 
loosed in the heavens." 

Jesus had been in some measure and by certain terms acknowl- 
edged as Messiah in early parts of his history, but no confession 

had yet recognized him as at once divine and 
ffisMessiahship human> Such he held himself to be. And,more- 
a revelation. . 7 

over, he held that that view of his nature could not 

be reached by any process of human reasoning or any leap of human 
imagination. It was a direct revelation from heaven. The lit- 
eral words of Jesus are : " Flesh and blood have not apocalypsed 
it to thee, but my Father." From such a mystery no human hand 
could have raised the veil and made the apocalypse, — no hand but 
God's. It is manifest that Jesus believed his own character and 
person such a miracle that no intellectual analysis of his words 
and acts could enable any man to reach the apprehension of them. 
He was a blessed man to whom the Eternal Father vouchsafed 
such a revelation. It must have been the deepest conviction that 
drew such utterances from Jesus. He was joyous in his solemnity. 
He calls Simon by his other name, Kephau, Cephas, Peter, Pock. 
" Kephau " was probably the word he used, speaking in the Ara- 
maic tongue, and this word Grecized was Ke<£<z?, and translated 
into Greek was Uerpos, of which our English is " Pock." He 
ascends from Bar-jona to Peter. 

This whole speech of Jesus to Peter, which must be acknowl- 
edged as one of the most important — if not the most important — 

of all his sayings, has been a source of great per- 
Address of Jesus p j ex i tv> ^he trouble with many commentators is 

their hardened ecclesiasticism. When Churchism 
hangs like a veil over the faces of men, they do not see the face 
of Jesus, and they hear his words as men hear the mumbling of a 
priest through the baize curtain at the church-door. A succeed- 
ing commentator may be afraid to differ from his predecessors, lest 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 419 

■ 

lie be charged with heresy, or at least irregularity. Many of the 
Protestant writers are as papal as the Roman writers. Roman 
Catholicism is the concentration of papacy on one pope ; secta- 
rian Protestantism is the division of the papacy among many popes. 
Many men seem afraid to know what Jesus really meant. They 
hear him through the ear-trumpet of " the church ;" they see him 
through the stained glass of " the church." To reconcile these 
sayings of Jesus with truth, and the known facts of history, will 
be a perpetual tax on the ingenuity of those who at the same time 
hold to Churchism. If a man can only dare to look the truth full 
in the face, and accept the truth and its logical connections, he will 
have less difficulty with the questions of the Rock and the Keys. 

Let us venture to utter the truth, even at the peril of being cast 
out of the synagogue. 

Jesus never intended to establish " a church," in the modern 
sense of the term, namely, a close corporation, inside which should 
be all that are to be saved, while all outside should 
be damned. He never intended to institute any ° c 
body in which should exist the distinction of clergy and laity, 
which should, as a whole, dictate to its members and to the world 
what their faith should be. He abrogated priesthood as a corpo- 
ration by making every man a priest. The churches now on 
earth are mere human economical arrangements, with no spiritual 
authority to declare that any man is a saint or a sinner. As com- 
munities and associations for propagating the principles of Jesus 
they may be useful ; as hierarchies they are hurtful. They may 
turn a man out of their body, but that in no way affects his rela- 
tions to Jesus or to God. Jesus was full of Anti-Churchism. 
He seemed to have a mission to destroy Churchism, which was so 
incrusting human hearts that they could not grow into beauty and 
ripen into maturity in the sunlight of God's love and smile. He 
was a Seceder, a Dissenter, a Come-outer, an Independent, any- 
thing you please to call him but Churchman. If he were living 
in our midst now he would endure to be called "glutton," "wine- 
bibber," "friend of publicans and sinners," and make no more 
resentment than he did when he was on earth ; but he would not 
allow himself for a moment to be shrunk into the contemptible 
insignificance of a mere " churchman." Living or dying, to the 
multitudes, to his disciples, in parable or plain speech, he nevei 
used the word " church," so far as the records show. 



420 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

Twice in Matthew — and it never occurs in the other three evan- 
gelists — a word in the original is translated "church."* If it 
were granted, which it is not, that the word means 

" h " W ° r W * iat is n0W or< ^ nar % understood by church, it 
would be a most remarkable thing that this 
Teacher, who was a great talker in every sense, should have only 
twice alluded to the subject of church. But when we come to 
examine these two passages we find no " church " in them. One 
of them is this, which records the confession of Peter. " On this 
rock will I build my church" are the words of the common Eng- 
lish version. The Greek word translated " church " is eKKk^ata, 
ecclesia, which does not mean an organization of any kind, but 
simply a congregation. An assembly brought together by the 
common crier in Athens was called ecclesia. In all the English 
versions before the days of Queen Elizabeth (except Wicklif's) 
the word was translated " congregation." The word " church " 
was substituted in the Bishops' Bible for the word " congrega- 
tion," and by express order of King James was so substituted in 
the authorized version of 1611, in every place where it occurs in 
the New Testament. In the German versions the Roman Catho- 
lic translators and commentators employ the term kirche, church, 
while the Protestants use gemeinde, congregation. The German 
Bible published in 1557, by Conrad Badius, has "congregation." 

As Jesus performed no " ecclesiastical " act, as he made no or- 
ganization of any kind, as he gave no directions to his disciples to 
make any kind of close corporation, as he nowhere speaks any- 
thing which involves the idea of churchness, in any measure or 
sense, and as he broke in with many ruptures upon the ecclesias- 
ticism which existed among his own countrymen, teaching that 
character was everything and mere position an incidental, we have 
a right to believe that he was no churchman. 

What, then, did he mean? Simply this. His congregation, 
that is, all who heard his call and came to it, should be built upon 
the foundation of the hearty belief that he was a 
tioT»" C ° ngrega ~ divine personage, the Son of the living God, and 
sent and set apart to be the Deliverer. Whether 
he had any right to make such a claim is a question for the de- 
partment of theology. All that we concern ourselves to know is 
this — what did he mean % He certainly meant that much, and 
* The other passage is in Matt, xviii. 17, and will be considered in its place. 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 421 

that is more than churchism. He meant that whoever took Jesns 
for his deliverer, that soul was of his congregation, whether bap- 
tized or not, whether enrolled in any society or church, 01 not 
All other things had fluxions, but this belief in him was to be the 
one invariable element of life ; it was to be the firmest foundation 
on which character could be built. 

He evidently believed also, and taught, that in all ages there 
would be men who, like Peter, would plant and stake their all 
upon a hearty belief in Jesus as the divine Deliverer of human 
souls, so that, whether there should be visible churches or not, his 
congregation should exist forever. The "gates of the grave," the 
under- world, death, — for the word translated " hell " in the com- 
mon version means this, and not a place of punishment, — " the 
gates of death shall not prevail against it ; " — which simply means 
that men may be born and may die, but there would always be 
those who believed in him as divine, and trusted in him as their 
Saviour : and these should constitute his " congregation." 

Quite naturally can the words which follow be interpreted, if 
one's mind be turned away from the fixed idea of churchism. 
All the controversy on the meaning of the powers 
of the keys has arisen from supposing that Jesus e powers 

was talking "church," to which subject he was 
making no allusion in any way whatever. The " kingdom of the 
heavens" does not mean a "church" or the " church." The very- 
breadth of the expression ought to have led men to see that it 
means something much larger. The " kingdom of the heavens " 
can no more be contained in the church than the whole physical 
heavens can be folded up and laid away in a stone cathedral. He 
that is only a churchman shall have only the keys of the church. 
Whatsoever he binds shall be bound in the church, whatsoever he 
looses shall be loosened in the church. But that is his limit. He 
cannot go outside this human organization called the church. 
But whosoever receives Jesus as divine, and trusts him as his 
Saviour, shall have the keys of all heavens, the range of the 
universe, and all home-rights in the Father's house of many man- 
sions. 

How much grander and more reasonable is this teaching of 
Jesus than the dogmas of some scholastic theologians ! Take any 
of their theories, and how little and immaterial they are ! They 
narrow heaven, and belittle God, and degrade Jesus. They pledge 



4:22 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES, 

the Infinite One to sanction any decisions of a very frail man, 
whom Jesus, in almost the next breath after this commendation, 
was compelled to rebuke and call Satan, or else they yield into 
the hands of a corporate body of men, comprising wise and fool- 
ish, learned and ignorant, strong and weak, good and wicked, the 
monopoly of deciding all moral questions and all human desti- 
nies. If that is what Jesus meant in this interview, he therein 
contradicted all that he had taught elsewhere, which was that 
character is everything and office nothing as concerns a man's per- 
sonal salvation. It drops him immeasurably. If that was his 
meaning, he is no more than a priest and a Levite. He ceases to 
be the cosmopolitan soul, the multitudinous man, the loftiest Son 
of Man, and the only-begotten Son of God. 

If there be any consistency in his doctrines, Jesus intended to 
apply to all men who made Peter's confession this proposition 
which he uttered concerning Peter. It would be 
m aning. mog j. imcr itical to take this solitary passage and 
interpret it into a signification which contradicts all his other 
teachings. To say that the power of the keys signifies " the pre- 
rogative of the Apostles either to admit into the kingdom of 
heaven or to exclude from it," is to say that Almighty God abdi- 
cated in favor of an impetuous though generous man, who was 
always blundering, if Peter's primacy is to be maintained ; or that 
the sceptre of the " King eternal " was transferred to a body of 
men whom their teacher, to the very last, chid for their stupidity 
and want of faith. Contrast with this the real meaning of Jesus. 
Whoever accepts him as the Divine Deliverer, and lives sincerely 
in that faith, shall be perpetually binding on himself certain things 
or casting from himself certain things, but all his decisions he shall 
afterwards find were sanctioned by the heavenly Father. The 
power of the keys is given to every believer, and it is a power to 
be exercised over himself alone and not over another. Sincere 
faith in Jesus is the only safe guide through earth and heaven, 
and it is a perfectly safe guide. No forms nor ceremonies give 
entrance into this kingdom, nothing but the heart's unwavering 
belief that he is " the Anointed Deliverer, the Son of the living 
God." One may enter " the church," man's organization, by bap- 
tism and other rites, with oral or written prof ession of creeds, but 
one can enter the " kingdom of the heavens " only as he takes 
Jesus for his guide. He may be in both the church and the king- 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 423 

dom ; but being in one is no evidence whatever that he is in the 
other. Men shall come from the east and the west and sit down 
in " the kingdom," while " churchmen " may be cast into outer 
darkness. 

It was an immense assertion. Whether he had any right tc 
make it or not, Jesus certainly did put forward the claim to be 
the only medium of entrance into the freedom and enjoyment of 
the kingdom of the heavens. 

It seems to have satisfied Jesus that he had secured not simply 
a foothold in human affection, but a real root in humanity. He 
charged his disciples not to go out and announce him as the 
Messiah. It was sufficient that they believed in him. The mul- 
titudes were looking for a sensuous millennium, and a secular 
Messiah to reign therein. It was too late to revolutionize them. 
He had not succeeded. His disciples would not succeed. The 
time for the perception of the beauty and grandeur of a spiritual 
Messiahship had not arrived. It would come. He was content 
to await its coming, so that only the " seed of the kingdom " were 
meanwhile kept in the earth. 

In the history of Jesus appears what we do not detect in other 
men. He had a control over history. He allowed nothing to be 
antedated in fact, while he anticipated everything 
in thought. The shadow of the cross on his path . . . 

° # # r nistory. 

lay as distinct as that which Gustave Dore, in his 
terrible pictures, throws everywhere on the way of the "Wan- 
dering Jew." He saw it. He talked of his death, before it oc- 
curred, with as much definiteness as he did of that of John the 
Baptist after it had occurred. His disciples could not see the 
outline of the shadow on the path until Jesus pointed it out to 
them. Now he begins to tell them " plainly," says the record in 
Mark viii., that he must go up to Jerusalem. He had absented 
himself from the late Passover ; now he " must go to Jerusalem." 
He should suffer many things. The conspiracy formed against 
him by the elders and chief priests and scribes should culminate 
in bis death. He should certainly be killed. 

But, — on the third day he should rise again ! He plainly pre- 
dicted that. 

The prediction of the resurrection seems to have made no im- 
pression upon them. Whether it was because he talked so much 
in parables with them that their exegesis was often sorely puz- 



4:24 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



He predicts his 
resurrection. 



zled, so that they knew not when to interpret his words literally 
and when figuratively,* — or whether the startling and astound- 
ing announcement that he was to be killed came 
so suddenly after his joy at the recognition of 
his Messiahship, — the fact comes out afterwards 
that they totally forgot the prediction of the resurrection. The 
statement that he, the newly acknowledged Messiah, was to be 
killed, was more than Peter could bear. He seized him by hand, 
or dress, or perhaps in embrace, and exclaimed, " God save thee,f 
lord ; not to thee shall this be ! " He actually undertook to rebuke 
him, as Matthew and Mark agree in recording. 

Jesus turned his back on Peter, saying, " Go behind me, Satan : 
thou art my stumbling-stone ; for thou regardest not the things of 

Rebukes Peter ^ 0( ^ ^ ut ^ e tnm & s °^ men «" A moment ago the 
Pock on which the church was to be built ! if we 
accept the interpretation of churchism : then it is fair to hold 
churchism to what Jesus says now, and this same Peter is the very 
devil and a stumbling-stone ! But the words no more apply to 
Peter here than there, in the sense of a closely restricted personal 
application. They contain a general truth. He who cannot 
accept the self-abnegation of Jesus, and endure the humiliation 
of a violent and ignominious death, but is so carnal and secular 
as to desire a reign of visible temporal glory, is a stumbling-block 
to the work of Jesus in the world. When they met face to face, 
as Jesus and Peter did, it was a personal rebuke. 

Satan is the Hebrew name for the chief of evil spirits, in whose 
existence as a personality Jesus certainly believed. The general 
meaning of the word is Tempter, or, more correctly, Adversary, 
one who sets himself in opposition to goodness and duty and 
right. It may have been used in this general sense to Peter, but 
certainly very pointedly, and with a distinct recognition of the 
personal existence of Satan. 



* The reader may consult John iv. 
33 ; Matthew xvi. 7 ; and John xi. 12, 
for passages in which Jesus manifestly 
spoke figuratively, and which his dis- 
ciples interpreted literally. At other 
times he spoke literally and they under- 
stood him figuratively: see Matthew 
xv. 15, 17; John xi. 11, 17; and John 
vi 70 



f The phrase in the Greek is an ab- 
breviation, and literally is, "Propitious 
to thee," or " Gracious to thee," mean- 
ing that the goodness of God should 
save the person from the evil spoken ; a 
sudden ejaculatory prayer for the safety 
of the person addressed. The very form 
shows the great excitement of Peter. 



THE GREAT CONFESSION. 425 

This resistance of Peter to the announcement by Jesus of his 
coming death is proof that, notwithstanding his noble and lofty 
acknowledgment of the spiritual Messiahship of Jesus, there still 
clung worldly notions to the mind of Peter, and to the disciples 
and followers generally. He therefore called his disciples and 
the people near to himself, and delivered a discourse to them, the 
substance of which is preserved by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
and which was as follows : — 

" If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross and follow me. For whosoever may wish to save his life shall lose it ; 
and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gos- 
pel's, shall find it. For what shall a man be profited if he Addresses his disciples. 
should gain the whole world and lose his own life, or be 
cast away ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life ? Whosoever 
shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which 
is in heaven, and before the angels of God ; but whosoever shall deny me and 
be ashamed of me and of my words before men in this sinful and adulterous 
generation, him will I also deny before my Father which is in the heavens : 
for the Son of Man shall come in his own glory, and in the glory of his Father, 
with his angels ; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. 
Verily I say unto you, That there be some standing here which shall not taste 
of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom with power." 

"Which seems to mean this : His Messiahship had been acknow- 
ledged, but it was to be a bitter disappointment, even to many 
who acknowledged it, because he was going to be 

° o o j^g meaning 1 , 

killed. If any man thought of becoming his dis- 
ciple, he must make up his mind to abandon all hopes of pecu- 
niary advantage and personal ease and indulgence. He must go 
further. He must deny himself. What flesh and blood call for, 
he must often refuse even to himself. He must submit to igno- 
miny and torture. Nothing was so disgraceful and painful as 
death by crucifixion, in which the condemned was compelled to 
carry the cross, which was to be the instrument of his torture, to 
the place of execution. So his disciples must learn perfect sub- 
mission to extreme sufferings. But there was a compensation 
even here. A man who gives his life up for the sake of Jesus 
and those doctrines of philanthropy which he preached, should 
indeed lose luxuries, comforts, home delights, and many a sensu- 
ous pleasure, but after all should find the truest and sweetest uses 
of life : whereas the selfish hoarder of his vital powers should find 
them shrinking within him. In general, vitality is maintained 



426 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

and strengthened by living largely, putting out the energies 
widely, life being not income but outgo. 

In that case why should a man lose his life % If he kill himself 
in the effort to grasp the whole world, even if that effort should 
be imagined to prove successful, nothing would come of it. He 
would be gone, lost, a castaway, out of existence ; then where 
would there be any use of pleasures if he did not exist to enjoy 
them ? The basis of everything is life. The universe is nothing 
without life. A man must therefore do all he can to increase his 
physical, intellectual, and spiritual vitality. The world will be so 
much world to him, and the man will be so much man to himself 
in proportion as he has life. And life is got by giving. The more 
a man gives himself to his generation the more he gets out of it. 
Jesus taught that to follow him was the way to gain life by 
giving it. Men must therefore confess him by following him. 

He was going through a dark passage. He would 
eir opes no ^^ concea j ^^ f rom them. But their hope of 
all a dream. ■»*■•'• -r 

Messianic glory was not all a dream. It was a 

mistake in so far as it was secular, but it was a truth in so far as 
it recognized him as the conquering Deliverer. He was to come in 
glory, iu his own glory and God's, which he spoke of as being iden- 
tical, with a holy familiarity, in such style as no man before his time 
or since has ever dared to employ. The rewards of mankind he 
represented as being in his hands, — a prodigious claim ! He knew 
the works of every man, and in exact accordance with those works 
he should give each man his reward, and there should be no mistake. 
He closed his address with the statement that there were those 
present who should not die until they saw the Son of Man coming 

in his kingdom with power. I do not know what 
Anincomprehen- he meant Did his disciples? Did any event 
sible statement. tl . ,.,. t $ , . , , 

ever occur in their lire-time wnicn corresponds 

with this statement ? If so, where is it recorded ? I know what 
theories have been propounded in explanation, have read the 
commentators, am familiar with the views of theologians, and 
have perhaps a theory of my own ; but the plain question, to be 
honestly answered, would amount to this : As each man in that 
company died, if he had been asked in his last moments whether 
he had seen any event which was to him a fulfilment of these 
words of Jesus, could he have designated any such event ? If he 
could, we have no means of ascertaining the fact. 



CHAPTEK III. 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 



It was about a week after the confession made by Peter that 
an event of great interest, as a fresh revelation, occurred in 
the history of Jesus. The narrative, as col- 
lected from all the New Testament historians, Probably Mount 

. ,, . Hermon. Matt. 

is tins : — .. M , . 

# § xvu. ; Mark ix. ; 

Jesus took Peter, James, and John into a high Luke ^ 
mountain apart. As he prayed he was trans- 
figured before them. The fashion of his countenance was altered, 
and his face shone like the sun, and his raiment became shining 
and white as the snow, white as the light, whiter 
than any earthly fuller could make them. Moses e gu " 

and Elijah were present and talking with Jesus, 
who had a glorious appearance, and they spoke of his death at 
Jerusalem, "which he should accomplish." The three disciples 
were heavy with sleep, but this vision kept them awake by its 
splendor. As Moses and Elijah departed, Peter said unto Jesus, 
" Sir, it is good for us to be here ! If thou wilt, I will make here 
three tents; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 
He spoke at random, for he was greatly scared. While he was 
speaking, the awe of the disciples was increased by the over- 
spreading of a bright cloud, out of which came the words, " This 
is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased : hear him." 
This splendor and these words overpowered them, and they fell 
on their faces greatly afraid. And when the voice was past, 
Jesus came and touched them, and said, "Arise, and be not 
afraid." And when they lifted up their eyes they saw no 
man but Jesus. 

As they came down from the mountain his disciples asked him 
why the Scribes taught that Elijah must first come. His answer 
was, "Elijah truly shall come, and restore all things: but I 
say unto you, That Elijah is come already, and they knew him not, 




BIDON. BAIDK. 







i ill 

!& 

§ 111 

5 ns 



m 






i 



;• i 

I 
iii iii 



■ ■. 



428 THE THIRD PASSOVEB TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

but have done to him whatever they wished. Thus also is the 

Son of Man about to suffer by them." The disciples understood 

him to mean John the Baptist in this last speech. 

y i] mus ^ n( j ag ^ descended f rom the mountain, Jesus 
first come. J 

charged them, saying, " Tell the vision to no man 

until the Son of Man be risen from the dead." Luke and Mark 

say that the injunction was obeyed. The disciples did not tell 

anything of the vision outside their own circle, but inside they 

held discussion of the meaning of the perplexing phrase, " risen 

again from the dead." 

It would appear that the intimation of his sufferings and 
death had had a depressing effect upon the mind of his dis- 
ciples. Under this cloud they struggled and questioned their 
own hearts for the space of a week, when the event of the trans- 
figuration gave new form to their thoughts and hopes. 

It is not known precisely what mountain was the site of this 

transfiguration. In the fourth century, from a passing remark 

by Cyril of Jerusalem, tradition fixed on Mount 

i e o e ^ a ]3 0r m G a iii ee famous for the beauty of its 
Transfiguration. 7 7 J 

form and for the wide view of Central Palestine 

beheld from its summit. In the sixth century three churches 

were built on its top, suggested by Peter's idea of three booths. 

Subsequently a monastery was founded. But later criticism has 

displaced the claims of Tabor. It was possible for Jesus, by a 

very forced march, of which we have no account, to reach Tabor 

within the period specified. But why should he return to Galilee, 

where his enemies were seeking him to "destroy him ? Mark 

(ix. 30) informs us that he did not go into Galilee until after 

this event. Moreover, Tabor was occupied, to its summits, by 

settlements, and had been, probably, from the time of Joshua. 

Jesus was in the highlands of Gaulonitis, in the region of 

Csesarea Philippi. Whoever in this place looks up for a "high 

mountain," immediately sees the sublime heights of Hermon, and 

the almost common consent of travellers and critics is now given 

to the theory that the transfiguration took place somewhere on 

Hermon. 

Jesus had with him the three representative and trusted dis 

ciples, Peter and James and John. It was his custom to go into 

the mountains for evening prayer, and sometimes to continue his 

devotions through the entire night. He seems to have done so in 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 429 

this instance. He prayed while his fatigued disciples slept. At 
some period of the night a strange awe suffused their slumbers. 
They woke to see their Master in a state of glori- 
fication. His face shone like the sun, and his very 
garments were glistening, snowy white, and luminous. Mark was 
struck with that fact, which must have been narrated to him by 
one of the spectators, and his simple remark is that they were 
white "as no fuller on earth can white them." This was the 
first stage of the marvel. Then two unknown men stood with 
him. They entered into solemn discourse with Jesus. The 
disciples learned from the lofty conversation that these were 
Moses and Eli as, the founder and the defender of the theocracy 
They spoke to Jesus about his death, which was shortly to 
occur. 

It was an awful time to the disciples. It seemed to flash upon 
Peter's mind that Jesus was now about to declare openly that 
Messiahship of his which Peter had so recently 
confessed ; that on this mount he was about to fix Peter ' s conjec- 
the seat of his empire, with Moses and Elijah 
as his prime ministers. It was the prevalent belief of the Jews 
that Elijah was to precede and herald the Messiah, bring back 
the pot of manna and Aaron's rod, settle the controversies 
between the Jewish schools, purify the people by some lustration, 
and hand the nation over to King Messiah. He seemed now 
about to begin this grand inauguration. But then, on the in- 
stant, he and Moses retire. Peter, in his general confusion 
and fright, blunders out a request to Jesus to be permitted to 
erect there such booths as the Jews were accustomed to put 
up in a temporary style for their Feasts of Tabernacles, so that 
Moses and Elijah might remain with Jesus and carry forward the 
great work. 

Before Jesus made any response a bright cloud encircled them, 
and the disciples were sore amazed and frightened as they en- 
tered the cloud. A new marvel broke on them. 
A voice sounded from the brightness, saying, e v01ce ' 

"This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased: 
hear him." The disciples fell on their faces, and remained so 
until Jesus came and touched them and encouraged them to 
arise, when they found that they were alone with Jesus. 

Whatever theory may be adopted as to this history, the effects 



430 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

upon the minds of the disciples is the important consideration : 
whether it was a vision which all three saw consentaneously, in 
all its parts, in a dream, or whether, being awake, 
n uenceont e ^ey were m g^^ a physical, intellectual, and 
spiritual state as, all together, to have witnessed 
these phenomena, it is certain that there were impressions made 
upon them which had great influence subsequently upon theii 
character and conduct. The surpassing glory of Jesus, his con- 
sistency with the law and the prophets, the subjection of Moses 
and Elijah to Jesus, his suffering of death not vitiating his claims 
to the Messiahship, were certainly represented with great power 
to the minds of these three representative and influential disci- 
ples, and by them brought to bear upon the whole body of the 
nearest followers of Jesus. 

But still there were two perplexities created by this vision and 
by the words of their Master. One was the " being raised again 
from the dead," as applied to Jesus. If he were 
the Messias, how could he die ? How could death 
have power over a being so glorious that the effulgence of his 
person rendered his very garments glistening ? They never did 
find a satisfactory solution of that problem through the whole 
life-time of their Master. That he was in some mysterious man- 
ner to accomplish at Jerusalem something which might be repre- 
sented as a death, they had gathered from the conversation of 
Moses and Elijah ; but that he should really depart this life by 
dying, being virtually murdered, and that his spirit should come 
back to that same mangled body and lift it from the grave, and 
go about in it as if he had never died, is a series of thoughts 
which seems never to have entered their minds. 

Their second trouble was to reconcile the fact that they had 
seen Elijah leave Jesus, apparently not to return, with the predic- 
tion of Malachi (iv. 5, 6) that Elijah must first 
no er per- come w bich, as their religious instructors had 

plexity. 7 7 & 

taught them to believe, meant that the personal 
appearance of the prophet Elijah was to precede that of the Mes- 
sias. Here he had shown himself to only three of the disci- 
ples, and not to the body of the people ; and instead of preceding 
Jesus, had really appeared to no one until this late period in the 
ministry of Jesus. Their Master gave them to understand that 
John the Baptist had fulfilled all predictions of a forerunner ; 



THE TEANSFIGHBATION. 431 

that he had preceded Jesus with the power of Elijah, and had 
been slaughtered, and that the fate of the Baptist prefigured the 
sufferings which he himself was to endure. His own approach- 
ing death by violence seemed as plain before his eyes as that of 
John, which had already been accomplished. 

After these wonderful revelations Jesus enjoined silence on the 
three witnesses. We can readily conjecture good reasons for this. 
They had become so affected by this interview that they could 
carry the moral influence into the whole body of the disciples 
without the description of phenomena which might give rise to 
perplexing and inharmonious discussions. Everything was to be 
done which should suppress the sensuous Messianic expectations 
of his followers. The very criticism made on this transaction by 
such men as Paulus and Yenturini and Strauss in modern days, 
shows just the spirit with which the narrative of such lofty scenes 
and experiences would have been met by the multitude and by 
the learned men of that time, who were generally coarse, skepti- 
cal, and profane. When no good can possibly come of speaking, 
and much evil may, it is wisdom to keep silence. 

Immediately upon the descent from the mountain occurred a 
scene which stands in contrast with the lofty splendor of the 
Transfiguration. Jesus came to the nine disci- 
ples whom he had left behind, and found them in s ar e a p W1l - p ^ 
great trouble and perplexity, and the hostile Mark ix. ; Matt. 
Scribes vexing them with questions, and the xvii - ; Luke **• 
multitude about them in a tumult. But there 
must have been something in the natural dignity of the person 
of Jesus, and perhaps on this occasion some reminiscence of the 
glory wherewith he had shone on the eyes of his three disciples 
in the Mount ; for the people were amazed at his appearance, and 
ran towards him and saluted him. He asked them, " Why do 
ye question among yourselves? " The disciples gave no answer, 
nor the Scribes. The former were ashamed of their weakness 
in the absence of their Master, and the latter feared his power 
now that he was present. The question, however, was soon an- 
swered by a man from the crowd, who came forward and kneeled 
down before Jesus, and said : " Teacher, I have brought to thee 
my son, mine only child, who has a dumb spirit ; and where it 
seizes him it tears him, and he suddenly cries out and foams, and 
gnashes with his teeth, and pines away, and the spirit with diffi- 



432 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

culty departs from him ; for he is a lunatic and sore vexed. And 
I spoke to thy disciples that they should cast him out ; and they 
could not." 

Here was the whole case, with all its difficulties, revealed. 

Here was a spectacle of mental and physical wretchedness, an 

epileptic and lunatic youth, whom the disciples 

e emomac j^ no j. p 0wer ^ ^ ea ]^ . anc | "b ecause they failed 

when they tried, the party antagonistic to Jesus 
had stirred up the multitude to profane skepticism, and perhaps 
to taunts, rejecting the Master in the persons of the disciples, who, 
under these jeers, on account of their weakness, grew still more 
impotent. The contrast with the Mount of Transfiguration was 
violent. Rafaelle's great picture in the Vatican presents to the 
eye the idea of the contrast, but fails to express it all. The 
Mount was bright and warm, and full of celestial health and har- 
monies, but here in the plain were physical disease and mental 
disorder, and darkness, and clang of discordant voices and pas- 
sions. It smote from the sensitiveness of Jesus the expression : 
" O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you ? How 
long shall I suffer you ? " What long pent up agony suspired in 
that groan ! He had lived to teach them that faith in God was 
everything as a basis of character and as an energy of life ; and 
it all seemed to come to nothing. He knew the power and good- 
ness of God so well that want of trust in Him on the part of 
others gave Jesus the greatest suffering. He could not endure it. 
It was not the sins into which their passions betrayed them that 
was most grievous, but the lack of faith which allowed their pas 
sions such power over their lives. 

" Bring him to me," he said. And as they brought him the 
boy had another fit, and he fell and wallowed foaming. And 
Jesus asked the father: "How long since this 
happened to him ? " And he answered : " From 
a child : — and often it has cast him into the fire and into the wa- 
ters, that it might destroy him ; but if thou art able, have com- 
passion on us and help us." Jesus replied : " If thou art able ! — 
all things are possible to him who believes." There may be a 
doubt as to the precise shade of meaning which Jesus attached to 
these words. The emphasis makes great difference. " If thou 
art able ! " would be quoting the man's words and rebuking him 
for the implication of inability on the part of Jesus. Repeating 



THE TRANSFIGURATION. 433 

the man's words without any emphasizing would be to say : " It 
is not a question of ability, physical or intellectual, but purely of 
faith ; if I have faith enough I can do this ; if my disciples had 
had faith enough they might have done it." Both these mean- 
ings may be in the speech of Jesus, but I think that over them 
predominates the sense given by the words when emphasized as 
above : " If thou — the father of the child — art able." Ko faith 
on the part of Jesus would have availed if the man remained un- 
believing : and, — faith is strength. " If thou art able " to believe 
— is the reply to " If thou art able " to cure. It is only the 
repetition of the teaching of Jesus that the greatest power of 
humanity lies in its trust in the Father God, that this gives a man 
control over all the possibilities of the universe, and that things 
become possible to men in proportion to their faith ; that as a man 
extends the radius of his faith he enlarges the circle of his possi- 
bilities. Faith and Love, in the system of Jesus, are the two great 
wings which bear a man upward through the universe to the 
highest attainments and enjoyments. 

The father must have felt that there was some rebuke in the 
reply of Jesus. He burst into tears and said : " Sir, I believe ; 
do thou help mine unbelief." This is at once so 

natural, so simple, and so profound, that every . e at er 8 

_ Piii. . . emotions, 

reader must reel that he is perusing a narrative 

of actual events. The father believed that his unbelief was in 

the way of the healing of his child ; he believed that Jesus could 

do something to destroy that unbelief ; he prayed him to do it, 

60 that at once his infidelity and his child's malady might be 

cured. If it was not the voice, it was at least the echo of faith. 

It was enough. 

By this time the people had begun to run together. He made 

no prayer, but said authoritatively, " Dumb and deaf spirit, I 

charge thee come out of him, and enter no more 

. , i . ,, a i i • i • ii • ,i Jesus heals the 

into mm. And shrieking, and having greatly , 

convulsed him, it left ; and the boy lay as if 
he were dead, so much so that some of the spectators pronounced 
him dead. But Jesus took his hand and raised him ; and he 
stood up. 

When they entered the house, his disciples privately asked him 
the cause of their failure. He plainly traced it to their lack oi 
faith. They then prayed, " Lord, increase our faith." His reply 
28 



434 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

was, " If you have faith as a grain of mustard, ye might say to 

this sycamine tree, ' Be rooted up and planted in the sea,' and it 

would have obeyed you ; or to this mountain, ' Re- 

y e sci- move h ence yonder ' and it should obev you. And 

pies could not. -,' -, ,4 -n- 

nothing should be impossible to you." He also 

said to them, " This kind can come forth by nothing except by 
prayer." It was a strong expression of the value attached to faith 
by Jesus. Stier seldom said a more sensible thing than his com- 
ment on this passage. " Faith cannot make it its concern, in a 
literal sense, to be removing mountains of the earth. But if it 
could be, and ought to be its concern, then faith would be able 
really [literally] to remove mountains." All the possibilities are 
within the reach of faith. But if a man have not faith, even the 
possibilities become impossibilities. The removing of material 
mountains is a matter of small moment. It would be curious to 
stand on a peak of the Alps, and see a spur of the mountain lifted 
by a word and set down quietly in a Swiss lake ; but it would be 
nothing more. Nothing useful, or beautiful, or profitable would 
be in it. A man who takes from his fellow-men a mountain of 
doubt, of intellectual and spiritual difficulty, is greater, does a 
grander, wiser, better, lovelier thing. Yery currently in the 
school of the Rabbins was a remover of such difficulties finely 
called " An Uprooter of mountains." 



CHAPTEE IV, 



LAST DAYS IN GALILEE. 



To such a pitch had risen the opposition to Jesus that he nc 

longer dared to show himself openly along the high-roads, lest 

his life and his ministry should be brought to a 

sudden termination by violence. He could not go Though North- 
, ,, , , ,, -r , em Galilee. Mark 

down to the lake, bo, crossing the Jordan near . , r ,, 

* o ix. ; Matt. xvu. ; 

its source, by field-paths and through byways Luke ix. 
he went with his disciples through Upper Galilee. 
In Gaulonitis he had declared to his nearest and most trusted 
disciples that his end was approaching, and that it was to be one 
of great shame and pain. But there were scattered throughout 
Galilee quite a body of people who in such measure believed 
on him that they might be called disciples. To these, " of whom 
a nucleus of more than five hundred brethren survived the trial 
of the cross," he now made the same announcement in plain lan- 
guage, saying, " The Son of Man is being delivered into the hands 
of men, and they will kill him ; and when he is killed, after three 
days he shall arise." Here was an open prediction of a violent 
death, and of a resurrection after a certain specified time. And 
yet they could not understand it. They could see no necessity 
for it. It was so contrary to all their expectations, to his great 
power and mighty works, that his death was utterly incompre- 
hensible. The resurrection was totally unintelligible. And they 
were afraid to ask him what this saying meant ; but it was a sad- 
ness and a sorrow to them. 

We do not know how long this journey was, nor what spots of 
Northern Galilee he visited. It was manifestly not intended to 
be a circuit of preaching, but a season to be spent in instructing 
his disciples, especially in the matter of his great trial, which he 
saw approaching. 

After some time he brought his disciples to Capernaum. On 
their arrival, Peter, who was the most demonstrative, and there- 



436 THE THIRD PASSOVEE TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

fore the most conspicuous of the little band, was applied to by 

the collectors of the didrachms. This didrachm (or double-drachm) 

was of about the value of thirty American centa 

*. Ti/r u m » m gold, and was the half -shekel tribute to the Tem- 

tax. Matt. xvu. D 7 

pie mentioned in Exodus xxx. 13. Every Jew 
acknowledged it. Even during the Babylonish captivity it was 
conscientiously and punctually paid. It was not, then, a tax to 
the Roman government, for it had been collected long anterior 
to the Roman rule. Jesus had been absent from his home, and 
now, upon his return to Capernaum, being in arrears, as this 
money had been due since the previous March, it was expected 
that he would attend to it. And yet there was something so excep- 
tional in his character and history that the collectors hardly dared 
to approach Jesus on the subject, but preferred to speak to his 
disciples. After he had passed into the house, they said to Peter, 
" Does not your Teacher pay the didrachm % " As all paid it, 
Peter supposed of course that Jesus would, and, generally blun- 
dering, often through his gushing earnestness and generosity, he 
said, " Yes." Perhaps he felt that his Teacher's honor was at 
stake, and, forgetting what he had a short time ago confessed, 
that Jesus was the Son of the living God, and thus, as Jesus 
declared of himself, greater than the Temple, he had placed his 
Master in the difficulty of confessing himself to be liable to Tem- 
ple-tribute, or of taking a position in which offence would be 
given where no good could be done. 

When Peter entered the house, Jesus said to him, " What think- 

est thou, Simon ? From whom do the kings of the earth receive 

tariff or poll-tax, of their own sons or of others \ " 

r. ,/ j. eS1 ^. S Peter answered, " Of others." Of course a prince 
should not pay it. ' r 

of blood royal would not pay a capitation-tax! 
"Therefore the sons are free," responded Jesus. Peter must 
have heard in the words and tone a very deep meaning. Jesus 
claimed to be a son of Jehovah in a sense in which no other Jew, 
and therefore no other human being, could utter the claim. He 
was a son, free in his Father's house. Other men might pay 
Temple-tax, but surely not he. The admission of Peter, the logi- 
cal connection of which that disciple did not perceive, took back 
his former confession and reduced Jesus to the level of an itiner- 
ant teacher. 

From this predicament his Master relieved him, saying, " But, 




LYSIMACHUt 



LAST DATS IN GALILEE. 4:37 

that we may not offend them, go to the lake and cast a hook, and 

take the first -fish that comes up ; upon opening its mouth thou 

shalt find a stater; take 

that, and give it to them 

for me and thee." It is to 

be presumed that Peter did 

so, else the narrative would 

have found no place in the 

history. The stater was a 

coin equal to the Hebrew 

shekel, about sixty American cents gold, and was therefore two 

double didrachms : it paid for two. But it is to be noticed that 

while Jesus put himself into brotherhood and sympathy with his 

disciples, there is always a dignified reserve. He does not say, 

" Give it for us ; " but " for me and for thee." 

This was a miracle or nothing. It was at least a miracle of 
knowledge, being out of the usual methods in which knowledge is 
gained. It was not a creation. There was no 
need of that. And Jesus never created before , ^^ e ° 

n t-t -i • -i t t • knowledge. 

the eyes of men. He did not make the money m 
the fish. The fish had swallowed it. He knew it, and knew that 
it would come to Peter's hook. And it came. The tax was paid. 
It is quite easy to say that this was a selfish act, that it was ex- 
erted for his personal benefit, and that it was undignified and un- 
necessary. It occurred. There is nothing else undignified, and 
unnecessary, and selfish in this man's life. To have paid this 
special tax would have been to surrender what he had claimed, 
and to let his disciples down from the high place to which he had 
been so long engaged in lifting them. As the Son of God, in a 
sense higher than any which can be claimed by any other, which 
is manifestly what he thought and taught himself to be, he should 
not pay the Temple-tax. Kings do not tax princes of the blood 
royal. As God's Only Begotten he was free in his Father's 
house. Nevertheless, as it would have been most imprudent to 
plant himself on that claim at this juncture of his history, and as 
Peter had pledged the payment of this tax, he performed this 
miracle, which at once meets the case and declares his superiority 
to other men. 

Several circumstances now combined to increase in the disci- 
ples the rigor of their anticipations of a sensuous Messianic reign. 



438 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

Jesus had told them that the end approached. The intimations 

of the darkness and sorrow that awaited him, with which he 

accompanied this prediction, seem to have made 

Messianic hopes; little impression upon them. The Messiah was 

'... _"' .. ' to reign. All sorrows would be like the morn- 

xvm. ; Luke xvu. , . ° , mm 

xi v> mg cloud before the rising sun. The Transfigura- 

tion, the miracle of the stater in the fish's mouth, 
combined with the ground he took as to his non-liability to be 
taxed, made them feel that the kingdom had in some sense been 
set up, and that the time of the distribution of honors must be 
approaching. Certain things had excited their vanity. Peter 
had received special commendation for his confession. Peter and 
James and John had been taken to witness the splendors of the 
Transfiguration. A miracle had been performed by which money 
had been procured to pay Peter's Temple-tax. Poor human 
nature could not endure all this, and so they fell into a dis- 
pute in regard to the Primacy. When they reached the pres- 
ence of Jesus they were flushed with the excitement of the 
discussion. Matthew says that they came and submitted the 
question to Jesus. Mark says that Jesus perceived the thought 
of their hearts. Their very visages plainly told of the alter- 
cation they had had. He questioned them as to what had been 
the subject of dispute. They were silent with shame. But he 
pushed them to a reply, and they said that they had been dis- 
puting on the question, " Who is the greater in the kingdom of 
heaven ? " 

Here was the spirit of churchism cropping out, with its official 

distinctions and struggles for office, which have been the curse of 

religionists in all ages. It was a fitting time to 

The rule of pre- g ^ ow ^ Qw ^^ kingdom of the heavens which he 

cgcIgiicg 

preached, the limitless field and perpetual dura- 
tion of principles of right, was set against everything that sa- 
vored of churchism. There were to be no distinctions in that 
kingdom, no officers, no primacies. He called the twelve out, 
and laid down to them this principle : " If any man desire to be 
first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all ; " as much as 
to say, profoundest humility and most extensive usefulness con- 
stitute the, only ground of distinction in the kingdom of the 
heavens. The distinctions there are of character and not of 
office. 



LAST DAYS IN GALILEE. 



439 



John's frank 
confession. 



To impress this he took a little child * and set him in the midst 

of them, and when he had taken the boy in his arms he said to 

his disciples, " Unless yon shall be changed, and 

-.. , i •-. i in . • x A little child, 

become as little children, you shall not enter into 

the kingdom of the heavens. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble 

himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of the 

heavens. Whosoever shall receive one of these children in my 

name receiveth me, and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not 

me, but him that sent me." 

This reminded John of something. The wideness of this 
catholic speech condemned a little act of sectarian meanness into 
which the disciples had been betrayed. It was 
frank in John to say, " Teacher, we saw one cast- 
ing out demons in thy name, and we forbade him, 
because he followeth not us." It was a most naive confession. It 
was an exhibition of denominationalism, sectarianism, churchism, 
in its very essence, but in its best manner. It gave Jesus an op- 
portunity to make a speech that ought to make any man blush to 
acknowledge himself a churchman, and in the same breath claim 
to be a Christian. Jesus said : " Forbid him not ; for there is no 
one who shall do a mighty work in my name and be able lightly 
to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us. And 
whosoever shall offend one of these little ones believing in me, it 
were better for him that a millstone were hung upon his neck 
and that he were sunk in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the 
world from causes of offence ! For it must needs be that offences 
come ; but woe to the man by whom the offence comes. For every 
one shall be salted with fire. Salt is good ; but if the salt have 
becpme saltless, with what will you season it ? Have salt in your- 
selves, and have peace one with another. See that ye despise not 
one of these little ones ; for I say unto you, Their* angels in the 
heavens always behold the face of my Father in the heavens." 

The connection seems to be this : Forbid no one. The doing 
of any good thing is sufficient authority for the doing. Do not dis- 
courage that follower of mine who follows me even at the greatest 



* There is a church tradition that this 
child was Ignatius, who afterward be- 
came a martyr. But there seems to be 
really no proof of this. The lack of 
iuch personal distinctions as minister to 



individual vanity is very striking in the 
absence of the names of many parties 
mentioned in the Scripture histories. 
Where there is no high moral reason foi 
it, no name is ever mentioned. 



440 THE THIRD PASSOVEE TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

distance and with the least faith. Schism is a great evil, and 
schismatics greatly to be condemned. But who are schismatics % 
Those who are driven from a church because they 
will not yield the truth ? No, but those who drive 
them forth. The doom of a destroyer of faith is terrible. Incen- 
tives to defection will naturally occur, but woe to the man who 
makes them. Those who follow me will be subjected to severe 
trial. As every sacrifice before being presented to God is sprin- 
kled with salt, so each of my disciples is to be salted with fiery 
trials. Salt is a symbol of spiritual preservation. Have this 
spiritual life in you. If it be gone you are worthless. Have a 
keen, sharp, active spiritual life in yourselves as individuals, and 
be at peace among yourselves. Have life. Let others have life. 
Strive not at all for pre-eminence, but very much for inner life. 
And see that you do not despise one of these little ones. The 
angels in heaven are like them. God sees in the angels the 
counterpart of His humblest, simplest children. And, perhaps, 
he also meant that to those angels He commits the keeping of 
little children and of child-like men. 

In this connection Jesus continued to teach them, and said : 
" Moreover, take heed to yourselves ; if your brother shall tres- 
pass, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone ; if he 
shall hear you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not 
hear you, take with yourself one or two, that by the mouth of 
two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if 
he neglect to hear them, tell it to the congregation ; * but if he 
neglect to hear the congregation, let him be to you as a heathen f 
and a tax-gatherer. Verily I say to you, Whatsoever ye shall 
bind upon the earth, shall be bound in the heavens ; and whatso- 
ever ye shall loose upon the earth, shall be loosed in heaven. 
Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree upon earth 
about asking anything, it shall be done for them by my Father in 
the heavens ; for where two or three are gathered together in my 
name, there I am in the midst of them." \ 

In this teaching of the method of mending breaches of fra- 
ternal fidelity Jesus utters some very profound 
truths. Two men belong to a congregation of fol- 
lowers of Jesus. One is offended by his brother. Let him not, in 

* See what was said on the transla- I f Which means one of another na- 
tion of this word, page 420. I tion, a Gentile. 



LAST DAYS IN GALILEE. 441 

turn, be an offender, but let him bring personal kindness to bear 
upon the offender for his restoration. It may prevail, and greater 
love come than existed before. But the offender may be incor- 
rigible. Let the offended take two witnesses, other brethren, so 
that this scandal may be kept from spreading, if possible, and so 
that if one continue to be offensive while the other is peaceable, 
it may be known which is the offender. If he shall continue un- 
appeasable, take the case to the congregation. If the voice of the 
brotherhood be disregarded, then the offender may be to the of- 
fended as if he were an " outsider," a Gentile, and a tax-gatherer, 
that is to say, no longer an object of fraternal confidence, but a 
subject for missionary zeal ; certainly not a person to be hated, 
for the whole teaching of Jesus and his whole conduct taught a 
different lesson. He received tax-gatherers and sinners, and ate 
with them. 

Row, whatever profound principle may underlie the declaration 
of what is bound upon earth being bound in heaven, that princi- 
ple Jesus applies to every believer, to all the dis- 

• i l i- j- j j. *i_ a .1 "K two agree." 

ciples, to his congregation, and not to the Apostles 

alone. That the whole essence of modern churchism and of an- 
cient hierarchism are totally absent ; that the " power of the keys," 
as it is called, belongs not to any officials as such, but to all Chris- 
tians as such, appears from the statement of Jesus, " If two of you 
shall agree upon earth about asking anything, it shall be done for 
them by my Father in the heavens ; " and from the reason which 
he assigns for this, namely, " For where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." These 
seem to be among the profoundest utterances and the loftiest 
claims of Jesus. "Wherever two souls exist, to both of whom some- 
thing is equally necessary, and necessary above everything else, 
so that they go to the heavenly Father with this united and para 
mount petition, it will be granted. It cannot be a trifling, earthly, 
temporary, egotistic thing ; it must be something that takes hold 
of eternity. If such a thing be asked it will be granted, because 
nothing contrary to God's will can, under such circumstances, be 
requested. The only permanent platform of union for any two 
souls lies high up among the loftiest things of eternity. 

His idea of a true church now comes out. It is not a hierarchy . 
It does not rest on officials. Any two souls together, united in 
the name of Jesus, make a church, with all powers and functions ; 



442 THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



His idea of a 
true church. 



for there is with them always a third, and that person is Jesus. 
There may be a true church without bishops, elders, and deacons. 
The fountain of spiritual power and authority is 
always present where two souls are spiritually con- 
joined. Whether Jesus makes good these claims 
is a question for individual spiritual experiences; but that he did 
make the claims is simply what we must record as history ; and 
this fact tears from the teaching of Jesus all that men have in- 
serted therein whereon to build ecclesiasticism, denominationalism, 
sectarianism, and whatever would give to any one believer in 
Jesus what does not belong to every other. His was to be a holy 
catholic church, and a holy catholic church is one in which are no 
persons who are not holy, and in which is no one who has what i3 
not catholic, common to all. 

Peter, the noble-hearted blunderer, apparently having failed to 

asten carefully to the discourse of Jesus, but pondering what had 

been said about offences, broke in with the ques- 

ow equent y ^ u j^^a j 10w f ^ en q^W mv brother trespass 

must I forgive ? .' ' • jL.,, . r .„ 

against me and 1 forgive mm s lill seven times t 
That seemed a large measure of placability to Peter.* But fancy 
the look which the large-hearted Teacher gave him when over 
against Peter's close arithmetical calculation of forgiveness he set 
a statement of boundless compassion. "Until seven times? I 
say not that, but until seventy times seven ! " 

That this compassionateness of Christian character might be 
impressed upon them he related the following parable : " There- 
Parable of the f° re shall the kingdom of the heavens be likened 
unmerciful ser- unto a human f king who wished to compare an 
vant - account with his slaves. And, beginning to com- 

pare, there was brought one to him, a debtor of many £ talents. 
And he not having wherewith to pay, the lord commanded him to be 



* It greatly exceeded the rabbinical 
rule of three times, which they based 
on Amos i. 3 ; ii. 6 ; Job xxxiii. 29, 30. 

f In the common version it is "a cer- 
tain king," in the original it is avQptairo) 
)8a<r£Aet, a man, a king ; but it seems to 
me that the translation above gives the 
true sense, making avdptoiro} emphatic. 
So Meyer says, "da das Himmelreich 
mit einem Menschlichen Konige ver- 
gliehen wird." 



X In the common version it is " ten 
thousand talents." So a number of the 
MSS. have fxvpiwv raAavTwv, but the old 
reading, as in the Codex Sin. , is iroKhwv, 
many. If the f ormer reading be adopt- 
ed, it means an infinite, if the latter, 
an indefinite debt. One talent, Attic, 
was equal to 6,000 denarii. If the read- 
ing be 10,000 talents, then the one owed 
his lord 600,000 times as much as his 
fellow-servant owed him. 



LAST DAYS IN GALILEE. 



443 



sold, and the wife, and the little children, and all that he had, and 
payment to be made. Then the slave falling down worshipped him, 
saying, ' Lord have patience with me and I will pay you all.' Then 
the lord of that slave, moved with compassion, released him and 
forgave him the debt. But that slave going out found one of his 
fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii,* and, having 
seized him, he throttled him, saying i Pay if you owe.' f Then his 
fellow-slave falling down besought him, saying, ' Have patience 
with me, and I will pay you.' And he would not ; but going out 
he cast him into prison until he should pay the debt. Then his 
fellow-slaves seeing what was done were very sorry, and came and 
told their own lord all that had been done. Then, having called 
him, his lord says to him, ( O wicked slave, I forgave you all that 
debt because you did entreat me : did it not behoove you also to 
pity your fellow-slave as I also pitied you ? ' And his lord, being 
indignant, delivered him to the tormentors until he should pay all 
that was owing to him. Thus also shall my heavenly Father do 
to you, if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brother." 
The moral of this beautiful parable is so apparent that it needs 
little explication. It teaches the Christian doctrine of Forgive- 
ness. A man must be wide-hearted who is a sub- 
ject of the kingdom of the heavens. The parable 
is in accordance to what Jesus taught as a proper prayer, " Forgive 
us our trespasses, as we have forgiven those who trespass against 
us." When the slave who owed to the master vastly more than 
his fellow-slave owed him, appealed for mercy to his lord, he pro- 
fessed by that very petition to believe that mercy was a grace 
which every man should show his fellow-man. When he would 
not forgive his fellow-slave he showed that that profession was a 
lie. So when a man asks God to forgive him, he announces to 
God that he has forgiven his fellows their wrongs against him. 
If he has not, he is lying in his prayers. It is not simply an im- 
perative rule of government, it is a fundamental principle in 
human nature. No man can solicit what he does not believe to 
exist. If a man do not feel mercy in himself he cannot believe 
in mercy in another. 



* Say $15 American gold. 

\ And yet it is certain lie did owe. 
So the meaning must be, ' ' Seeing that 
thou owest, pay me," which signifies 



that there is nothing to be done but to 
pay when anything is owing ; no room 
for mercy and forgiveness. 



444 THE THIRD £ASSOYER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

About this time Jesus made another missionary demonstration. 

He organized thirty-five companies, each consisting of two disci- 

. pies other than the twelve he had already selected. 

The mission of \, . , -,>rr- *i -, -■ -, «. 

the seventy. Luke -" 1S somewhat difficult to keep the harmony of 
x. 1-3, 16 ; Matt, the narrative at this point, and modern criticism 
vii. 6 ; x 28-25 ; has attacked the whole account of the Mission of 

Luke vi. 40 ; John ^ S eventVj as g [ Yen fry T^]^ on fa e g YOUIi & that 

there is no trace of them in the subsequent history 
of Jesus or his early followers. It would seem that even a super- 
ficial view of the work assigned these seventy should be an answer 
to that. Jesus was shortly to go from Galilee to Jerusalem. He 
sent these messengers before his face. His time was shortening. 
Seventy men could rapidly spread themselves and make procla- 
mation of the gospel. It was not intended to institute a perpetual 
order. Indeed it seems to have been a temporary arrangement, 
and that Jesus probably remained in Capernaum, from which, we 
believe, he sent forth these bands, until their return, and then 
began his journey. It was to be a brief, quick movement, pre- 
paratory to his travels towards Jerusalem. We are not compelled 
to understand by the words " into every city and place whither he 
would come," that Jesus would go to every town they visited, but 
that he would not enter any town where none of the Seventy had 
been. 

The ground occupied by these swift missionaries we cannot 
positively describe, but it is probable that it included a part of 
Samaria, and much of Perea and Judaea, where he- spent the last 
six months of his life. The commission was this : " Go : behold 
I send you as lambs in the midst of wolves ; be ye therefore wise 
as the serpent and harmless as the doves. Give not the holy to 
the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest they tram- 
ple them with their feet, and turning might rend you. But when 
they persecute you in this city, flee into another ; for verily I say 
unto you, You shall not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of 
Man come. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor the slave 
above his lord ; it is enough for the disciple that is perfect that 
he be as his teacher, and the slave as his lord. If they have called 
the house-owner Beelzebul, how much more those of his house- 
hold ! Fear them not, therefore." 

They were simply to proclaim his coming and his gospel. But 
the country was excited against him. It behooved these disciples 



'ml 






■ ft- 



mm 

1 I I ;:'■': "ii. 










i;.,( " Al i *V 



Ii 




y m^ sill,! 



mgiigb 



n r 



LAST DAYS EST GALILEE. 445 

to unite the innocency of doves with the supposed watchfulness of 
the serpent. In declaring the truths which it was the mission 
of his life to establish and propagate, they were 
to use discrimination. It were folly to give the comin Pr ° im 
consecrated flesh of sacrifices to dogs. It were 
folly to present jewels to swine, who, finding that these did not 
satisfy hunger, would crush them into the mire and turn in their 
voracity upon the givers. Yet, when they had conducted them- 
selves as well as possible, no circumspection could keep them from 
being assailed with malignity. When one town rejected them 
they must escape to another, and thus give the whole land an op- 
portunity of knowing what it was that Jesus taught. He assured 
them that they should not have visited all the towns till the Mis- 
sion of the Son of Man be accomplished by the establishment of 
his claims as Messiah, if that be the meaning of the saying, " Ye 
shall not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of Man come." 
If that be not the meaning — and I am far from being sure, and 
give it as the most plausible conjecture — then I do not know what 
Jesus meant. He was going up to Jerusalem. There were two 
things to be secured, namely, an increased attention to himself 
and his words, and a sufficient interest upon the part of the popu- 
lace to give him protection against the growing malignity of the 
church party — the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees. All this might 
in some measure be produced by the ministry of the Seventy. 

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was now at hand. It was, as 
Josephus says, the holiest and greatest of their festivals. The peo- 
ple would be assembled in great crowds. It would 

be an occasion for a powerful prophet to make an Galilee and Sa " 
,.,,,, ^ , , ., maria. Johnvii, 

impression which should move the whole nation. .^ . Luke ^ 

The younger sons of Mary, whom we should call xvii. 

the half-brothers of Jesus, did not believe he was a prophet, yet 

perhaps hoped that he might put himself forward as a Messiah, 

such a Messiah as they, in common with their nation, hoped 

for — a splendid deliverer, and conqueror, and king. They 

urged him to go into Judaea, as his popularity seemed waning 

in Galilee ; and moreover, all that he had accomplished was to 

attach a few fishermen to his cause. He had not won a person of 

any social or ecclesiastical distinction. To this politic advice, 

which would have been sound if Jesus had intended to claim and 

maintain such a Messiahship as they supposed, he returned this 

reply :— 



446 



THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



" My time is not at present, but your time is always ready. The 
world cannot hate you ; but it hateth me, because I testify that its 
works are evil. Go you up unto this feast. I go not up to this 
feast ; for my time is not yet fulfilled." 

They wished him to join their caravan, and go up publicly and 
conspicuously. His time had not arrived. He would not be pre- 
cipitated. He would avoid as far as possible giving any occasion 
to his enemies. He would not be of the party of his brethren. 
But after they had left for Jerusalem, he arranged his plans and 
went up to the metropolis in a secret manner. He sent messen- 
gers before his face, who made the necessary preparations, so that 
in the evening he could enter lodgings, rest, and next day proceed 
on his journey. They were going along the borders of Galilee 
and of Samaria. At one of the Samaritan villages 

Inhospitable Sa- ,, /• -i -i -i • i j_t 

maritan village tne P artv were refused lodgings because they were 
going to attend the feast in Jerusalem, thus wit- 
nessing against Mount Gerizim. Sectarian rancor conquered ori- 
ental hospitality. James and John, the latter generally conceived, 
I think, to be a sweetish kind of characterless young man, were 
so enraged that they desired permission from their Master to call 
down fire from heaven to consume the town. They were not con- 
tent that Jesus should do it. They desired the personal gratifi- 
cation of vengeance on these people. Jesus rebuked them. They 
then went to the next village on the route. 




STATES OP TEYPHON. 



PAET VI. 

FKOM THE FEAST OF TABEENACLES UNTIL THE 
LAST WEEK. 

FROM OCTOBER. AD. 29, TO APRIL, AD. 30— SIX MONTHS. 



CHAPTEE I. 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 



In the mean time his brothers, with many other friends, and all 

the Jewish people who could travel, had gone up to the Feast of 

Tabernacles. This festival is spoken of in the 

Talmud as the Feast par excellence, and by Jo- . T . 

-f ii nacles. John vii. 

sephus and by Plutarch as the most holy and 

glorious of all the Jewish Holidays. It was celebrated in the au- 
tumn, when the heats were abated and the rains had not begun. 
The harvest had been gathered, and the Day of Atonement had just 
passed. In the fulness of their garners, and in the sense of free- 
dom from the guilt of their sins, the whole people rejoiced together. 
Moreover, it was a joyful celebration of a sad passage in the early 
history of their nation, when their fathers had dwelt in booths in 
the wilderness, and even Jehovah's sanctuary was in a tent. 

From all parts of the land, and even from many foreign parts, 
the devout poured into the Holy City. Iso good Jew allowed 
himself to sleep in a house. Boughs full of green leaves were 
brought from the country, and temporary booths constructed on 
house-tops, and along thoroughfares, and in all the environs of the 
city, until Jerusalem was covered with a temporary forest. Glad 
ness reigned, and public and private rejoicing prevailed. 

The Temple service partook of the festal air of the occasion. 



448 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



Evening service. 



Immediately after the regular morning sacrifices, every day, a 

priest went with a golden vessel to the fountain of Siloah, on the 

m . . side of the hill on which the Temple stood, and 
Temple service. # ? ' 

drew water, which he brought through the water- 
gate, accompanied by a gay procession and the sound of trumpets, 
and having mixed it with wine, poured it on the sacrifice upon the 
altar, amid the hallelujah shouts of the people. This probably 
reminded them of the supplies of water Jehovah had given to 
their fathers in the emergencies of the wilderness. The joyf ill- 
ness of this ceremonial was so great that it passed into a common 
proverb: "He that never saw the rejoicing of drawing water 
never saw rejoicing in all his life." * 

As a complement of the morning service, and retaining another 
reminiscence of the wilderness life of their ancestors, namely, the 
guidance by the pillar of fire through the night, 
there Were set up, in the Court of the Women, 
two great golden lamp-stands, and when these were kindled they 
threw their light over the whole city. Then all the Temple 
music played, and the members of the Sanhedrim, the elders, the 
rulers of the synagogues, the doctors of the law, and all those who 
were distinguished by age, piety, and learning, danced wildly and 
recklessly, in the sight of the women who crowded the balconies, 
and the men who thronged the court ; he that made himself the 
most ridiculous achieving the greatest success. Perhaps this ad- 
dition to the ceremonials was taken from the dance of David 
before the Ark. 

There was another peculiarity of this festival. In addition to 
the usual daily sacrifices, on the first day thirteen young bullocks, 
two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year, were sacrificed ; 
the next day, twelve bullocks; the third day, eleven; and so 
decreasing until on the seventh day, on which seven bullocks 
were offered, making seventy in all. This number, the Jewish 
doctors taught, represented the languages of the seventy nations 
of the world, and the process of diminution represented the gra- 
dual reduction of those nations until all things should come under 
the reign of the Messiah, f 

The legal limit of the " Feast of Tabernacles " was seven days, 



* Jennings in his Jewish Antiquities 
quotes this from the Mishna, tit. Sweah, 
cap. v., sect. 1. 



f R. Solomon on Numb, xix., cited 



by Lightfoot in his Tempk 
chap, xvi., sect 1. 



Service, 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 449 

but it was followed on the eighth day by a supplemental festival 

of rejoicing, especially over the ingathered crops, their corn and 

their wine. This was a day of special jollity, from 

which Jennings* suggests that the heathen bor- „ ,. , 
to to ^ festival. 

rowed their Saturnalia. Plutarch even made the 
mistake of supposing that it was kept in honor of Bacchus, for he 
says (Symposia, lib. iv. prob. 5) : " In the time of the vintage the 
Jews spread tables, furnished with all manner of fruits, and lived 
in booths, specially of palm and ivy wreathed together, and they 
call it the ' Feast of Booths ; ' and then a few days after [alluding 
probably to the last day of the feast] they kept another festivity, 
which openly shows it was dedicated to Bacchus ; for they carried 
boughs of palms, etc., in their hands, with which they went into 
the temple, the Levites (who, he fancies, were so called for Ewo?, 
one of the names of Bacchus) going before with instruments of 
music," etc. 

It was to this gayest of all festivities that the men of the nation 
were gathering. But over all there was a shadow. The wonder- 
ful words and works of Jesus had spread themselves through the 
land. The mission of the Seventy had freshly excited public 
attention. Every man had something to tell or to hear of what 
Jesus had been saying or doing. Misrepresentations and exag • 
gerations were, of course, rife. Opinions differed. Parties were 
beginning to crystallize. Some were for him, some against. The 
latter were more and stronger than the former, whose favorable 
opinion of Jesus we find much modified by the pressure of public 
sentiment. They said, "He is a good man," while the others 
said, "Nay, but he deceives the people." His friends did not 
dare to render a frank expression of their views of his character 
and his operations. 

Suddenly, in the midst of the feast, Jesus appeared in the 
Temple and began to teach. It was like an apparition. 

What course he had come they knew not. He was not at the 

beginning of the feast. His absence had occasioned much anxious 

speculation upon the part of friends and foes. T iX , - M 

J- r \ Jesus at the feast. 

lne days were going by, and he did not come. 

But perhaps on Wednesday, the fourth day of the feast, when 

expectation of his coming had begun to flag, he calmly walked 

* Jewish Ant., book iii., sec 6. 
29 



450 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

into the Temple, took his position, and began to unfold his doctrine 
as if nothing unusual had occurred, as if his friends were not 
intensely anxious for his safety, and as if his foes had not been 
forming plots to compass his destruction. He went amply with wide 
knowledge, and powerfully with great authority, into his discourses. 
The Jews listened and were amazed, and started the inquiry, u How 
does this man know letters, never having learned ? " They intended 
to disparage him by calling the attention of the people to the fact 
that he had not received Rabbinical instruction. The intention 
was to create popular prejudice against him, as if he were an in- 
terloper, not being a graduate of the schools, not 
His defensive -, . . ,1 . £ , -, . TT . .-, 

, being; m tue succession 01 the priests. His replv 

speech. & r r J 

was, " My teaching is not mine, but His who sent 
me." He did not mean his doctrines simply, but also his mode of 
teaching and the spirit with which he taught. They charged that he 
usurped the office of teacher. This he denied. God was with him. 
In proof of this he says, " If any one will do His will he shall know 
of the teaching, whether it be of God or I speak from myself." 
This is a plain way of practically putting the teachings of any 
teacher to the test. If a man be living in perfect purity of heart, in 
strict study and obedience of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual 
laws and ordinances of God, he will render himself a test of the 
truth of any other man's teaching. To this test Jesus submitted 
himself. As if he had said: All of the nation who are acknow- 
ledged to be living pure lives confess my teaching divine : try it 
yourselves : in proportion as you do what you already know that 
God has taught to be the duty of man, in that proportion will you 
open your hearts to me. 

And then, in disproof of the allegation that he was an in- 
truder into the teacher's office, he submits the following plain 
assertion : " He who speaks from himself seeks his own 
glory ; and he who seeks the glory of Him that sent him, the 
same is true, and unrighteousness is not in him." The former 
is moved by a narrow and low vanity; the latter by a high 
devout spirit. No ordination, no anointing, no induction into 
priesthood, no consecration can make, the former a teacher of 
morality. His selfish vanity breaks his claim. Jesus appealed to 
them whether such characteristic had ever appeared in him. He 
did not take his position from self -promptings ; he did not teach 
for morality what was merely the suggestion of his personal 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 451 

fancy ; lie did not seek to glorify himself, being willing for that 
purpose to warp the truth in unrighteousness. He was so con- 
scious of his rectitude in this particular that he rested his appeal 
on the opinion of all the people. 

That was his defensive speech : he then made an attack upon 
his enemies. They could not comprehend and obey him, because 
they had not sought to comprehend and obey those 
who had preceded him, whom they acknowledged e . a aCKS 

,. . , i.i i mi enemies. 

to be divinely authorized teachers. I here was 
Moses, the founder of their theocracy, the acknowledged law- 
giver. They had the Decalogue. They were living in violation 
of it. The Jewish priesthood of his day were notoriously licen- 
tious. Their rabbis and elders were so impure that when they 
brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery, his speech, which 
meant, "Let him that is no adulterer throw the first stone," so 
condemned the entire assembly that not a man of them could 
remain in his presence. And now they stood around Jesus, a 
band of conspirators and murderers. He showed them that this 
was not a mere question of biblical scholarship, but of that essen- 
tial religion which consists in doing the will of God. What is tho 
capability of elucidating a point of scholastic perplexity compared 
with a consecration to doing the will of the Most High God ? 

And then he charged the rulers that they were at that 
moment seeking to kill him. The multitude regarded this asser- 
tion as an exaggeration of his fancy, and said, " You have a 
demon ! who seeks to kill you ? " — meaning that he was dis- 
ordered through melancholy. They did not know what .secret 
machinations were then at work among the rulers. Jesus gave 
them a reminiscence. Some time ago, in that same city, he had 
marvellously restored an impotent man to strength ; and beneficent 
as was this great act of power, it wrought in the hierarchy no 
sympathy for him, no disposition to co-operate with him for the 
welfare of the people; but because it infringed some of their 
oppressive regulations for observing the Sabbath-day, they had 
plotted against him, and had never ceased to endeavor to com- 
pass his death. 

He defended that past act. He put the case to them thus: 
"Moses gave to you circumcision (not that it is of Moses 
but of the fathers), and ye circumcise a man on the Sab- 
bath. If a man receive circumcision on the Sabbath, that 



4:52 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

the law of Moses should not be broken, are ye angry with 

me because I have healed a man on the Sabbath? Judge 

not according to appearance, bnt judge righteous 

He defends his • j . » rrn ±. • ±. /-v 

„ , , ., . iiidgment. lhat is to say — Circumcision was 

Sabbath, act. J ' ° J 

earlier than Moses, who merely confirmed in legal 
enactment what the fathers had always practised as a part of 
Monotheism. The male child was to be circumcised on the 
eighth day, even if it fell on the Sabbath, because circumcision 
was an important sanitary regulation. But the Jewish hierarchy 
had sought to destroy Jesus because he had made a man every 
whit whole on the Sabbath, — such poor judges were they, so 
utterly incapacitated by reason of their adherence to the external 
letter, utterly unmindful of the internal spirit. This argument 
began to prevail with the people, and incline them favorably 
towards Jesus. So, very shortly after, some of them of Jeru- 
salem said, " Is not this he whom they seek to kill ? And lo ! he 
speaketh boldly, and they say nothing to him. Do the rulers 
know whether of a truth that this is the Christ ? But this one, 
we know whence he is: when the Christ cometh no one knoweth 
whence he is." This shows how the multitude fluctuated. The 
courage of Jesus struck them as admirable. They had be- 
come convinced that the rulers were seeking to destroy Jesus. 
Perhaps they had been paralyzed by finding in this man some 
indications of his being the Messiah, which had frightened them. 
But then they swung away from that feeling by the reflection 
that Jesus was a Kazarene. They knew him to be a citizen, if 
not a native, of a mean town in the provinces. The opinion 
was that the Messias should arise among men by sudden incarna 
tion, without earthly parentage. But this man's parentage they 
supposed to be known to them, which is sufficient to their minds 
to set aside all supposition that he was the Messias. 

Then cried Jesus in the Temple, teaching and saying, "Ye 

both know me and know whence I am: and I am not come 

of myself, but He who sent me is true, whom ye 

venror^ 11 ^" kn ° W n0t Bllt I lm ° W Him; fOT J am fr ° m 

Him, and He hath sent me." They thought to 
humiliate him by their reference to his humble extraction. "With 
a loud voice, openly in the Temple, he acknowledged his low 
earthly relationships. As Lange says, "He even treated with 
a certain cheerful irony the supposition that therewith they kne^w 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 453 

his real essential origin." But when he speaks so freely of his 

heavenly descent they desired to arrest him: but they could 

not. There was something in him which repelled their rudeness. 

John says that it was God's overruling providence, " because his 

hour was not yet come." There were, indeed, among the people 

those who believed in him because he was a miracle- worker, 

for they said, " When the Christ comes will he do more signs than 

this one does?" Such sentiments among the people rendered 

the rulers uneasy. While these things were going forward the 

Sanhedrim was in session in the Temple, "in the stone chamber 

between the fore-court of the Gentiles and the inner court," as 

Tholuck says. The Pharisees probably conveyed to them this 

flux and reflux of public opinion. The Sanhedrim sent officers 

with orders to arrest him. 

Then said Jesus, with a tone which seems to have disarmed 

them, " Yet a little while am I with you, and I go to Him that 

sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find 

me ; and where I am ye cannot come." This , arming 

. r» i speech, 

most probably meant simply that for the present 

they could not touch him, but that in a short time he would have 
a more complete separation from them. But the saying alarmed 
them, and they said, " Where is he about to go that we shall not 
find him '{ Is he about to go to the dispersion among the Gen- 
tiles, and teach the Gentiles \ " 

Thus they were perplexed with contradictory emotions and 
opinions. They affected to despise him, and yet they could think 
and talk of nothing else. Jesus was the topic of public and pri- 
vate discourse. He was the nation's mystery — a riddle to the vul- 
gar, a problem to the thoughtful, a prodigy to the multitude, and 
a terror to the rulers. He was admired, and criticised, and hated, 
and dreaded. There was such a sanctity about him that they 
could not lay violent hands upon him. But he exposed to each 
party the meanness and corruption of the other until he became 
dreadful. To keep him was to be perpetually tormented. To 
drive him from the country was to send him out to preach a doc- 
trine which should embrace all mankind^ and thus break up the 
monopoly of religion which the Jews supposed themselves to pos- 
sess. To do him violence was perilous, because there was such a 
profound interest in the man and such a division of popular sen- 
timent. They were terribly perplexed. 



454 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

The " Feast of the Tabernacles," strictly speaking, closed at the 
end of the seventh day ; but on the eighth day was a supple- 
mentary festival which concluded the whole, and 
of the feast^ ^ wn ^ cn was " tne great day of the feast." On the 
other days the priests, as we have seen, went to 
the fount of Siloam and drew water, which was brought with 
great rejoicing into the Temple. This ceremonial was omitted on 
the eighth day. The seven represented the wandering, the eighth 
the entrance into the land of rest, the nation's home. The water 
came to represent in symbol the Holy Spirit of God. It had been 
always a fact to notice that there was no fountain in the Temple 
limits on Mount Moriah. This was interpreted to signify that the 
refreshing spirit was lacking in their dry ecclesiasticism, and the 
gift of that spirit, like the opening of a fountain, was among the 
most precious promises of prophecy. Joel (iii. 18) foretold that it 
should come forth from the House of the Lord, and Ezekiel (xlvii.) 
describes its breaking forth from under the threshold of the Tem- 
ple. It was the great expectation of the spiritually minded Jews, 
and most probably was constantly associated in their minds with 
other unspeakable benedictions which should come with the 
Messiah. 

It was on this day, the great day of the feast, when the failure 
to draw water from the fountain of the Siloam reminded the peo- 
ple of the absence of all fountains in the Temple, 
ountam o 1- ^^ ^ predictions which many undoubtedly in- 
terpreted literally, and to which a few assigned a 
high spiritual significance, Jesus, who was accustomed to sit as he 
taught, rose up, and lifting his voice, cried out to the multitude, 
" If any one thirst, let him come and drink. He who believes on 
me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters, as the Scrip- 
ture has said." He made allusion, probably, to such passages as 
Isa. xliv. 3, lv. 1, lviii. 11. The meaning seems to be, that in 
that man's inmost nature shall be sources of refreshment for him- 
self, which shall yield streams of refreshment for others. This 
appeal touched the hearts of some, who said, " Of a truth this is 
the Prophet." Others grew more emphatic, and said, " This is the 
Christ, the Messiah." Others said, " No ; for doth the Christ come 
out of Galilee % Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes of 
the seed of David, and from the town of Bethlehem, where David 
was % " The party feeling grew strong. Some of the multitude 




THE POOL OF SILO AM. AT THE JUNCTION OF THE VALLEY OF KIDBON WITH 
THE TYROPCEON. 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 455 

■called out to arrest him, but no one had the courage to lay hands 
on him. J 

The officers sent by the Sanhedrim returned without him and 
to the indignant question, "Why have ye not 
brought him?" they answered, "Never did man They cannot 
speak as this man speaks." The enraged Phari- arrestW 
sees taunted them: "Are ye also deceived? Have any of the 
rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him ? But this cursed mob 




THE ASSEMBLY OF THE SANHEDEIM. 

(From an ancient description.) 

do not know the law » Here Nicodemus, a member of the San- 
hednm, the person who had had an interview with Jesus by night 
interposed w:th the question, "Does our law condemn a man 
except it hear first and know what he does ? " It seemed to be a 
Plain and honest question, but so excited were this assembly of 
judges that they began to deal in invective, saying, "Art thou 



456 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

also of Galilee ? Search and look, for out of Galilee arises no 
prophet." They were ready to quote Moses for their purposes, 
but would not listen when it made against them and their prac- 
tices ; and it was not true that no proj3het came from Galilee, as 
Jonah and Amos, and perhaps others, were of that country. 

So the assembly was broken up in disorder, and every man 
went to his house, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, and 
there spent the night. 

Again he came back to the city. The Feast of the Tabernacles 

had ended. The lights were dead in the great candelabra that 

had shone upon the city, a reminiscence of the 

Jerusalem; the piUar of fire which had led their fathers thiwgh 

sniy John viii. tne wilderness. It was the painful darkness fol- 
lowing a great light, the silence of a- deserted ban- 
quet hall, which now lay upon Jerusalem. Jesus entered the 
Temple to teach the people. Every day a teacher could find 
hearers there. Now he might still find many who had come up 
from the provinces and were still lingering in the city. As soon 
as he was seated and prepared to teach, a very great concourse 
gathered about him. 

In the mean time the Scribes and Pharisees had concocted a 
plan to entrap him, and to raise against him the dislike of the 
people. They brought to him a woman taken in 
taken in adultery a dultery, and sat her in the midst of the crowd, and 
said to Jesus, " Teacher, this woman was taken 
in adultery, in the very act. Now, Moses in the law commanded 
us that such should be stoned ; but what do you say ? " The refer 
ence was to Deuteronomy xxii. 21. The woman must have been 
unmarried, but betrothed, as stoning was prescribed by the law 
only for such persons. She was therefore probably young and 
not hardened. This must have been a most painful ordeal. In 
nothing does the superior beauty of spiritual goodness over hard 
and technical morality appear more than in this scene. Jesus was 
spotlessly pure. He did not assert his purity by bursting into 
invectives against the "horrid creature." Tie modestly bent his 
head, and wrote on the ground with his finger. He had no pruri- 
ent curiosity. The subject was distasteful. But the Scribes and 
Pharisees seemed carried away with their zeal for purity. They 
had dragged the poor guilty thing before the public gaze. They 
were then committing a sin greater than hers, as malicious 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 457 

hypocrisy is worse than incontinence. But every man engaged 
in this exposure had himself committed adultery. 

Jesus did not wish to touch the question. But they urged it 
They thought it would embarrass him. If he should say, " Stone 
her ! " he would be advising a breach of Roman law, which took 
such power out of Jewish hands. If he considered the case mildly, 
the populace would be excited against him, as one who was dis- 
posed to relax the law of Moses. These bad men were animated 
by many forms of vile passions. So they urged the question. 

Jesus, blushing, lifted himself up. He looked through each 
man's eyes to the bottom of his soul. He said : '* Let him among 
you who has never sinned first cast a stone at 
her." (See Dent. xvii. 7.) Again he blushed, Caught in theii 

-i rm i 0Wn tra P- 

and stooped, and wrote. The word smote them. 
It aroused their consciences. The oldest Pharisee among them 
was an adulterer ; so was the youngest Scribe ; so was each man. 
Some of the crowd probably knew the licentiousness of these 
hypocrites, and, if so, gave them such significant looks as must 
have been most embarrassing. The oldest Pharisee among them 
sneaked off ; so did the youngest Scribe ; so did each man. When 
Jesus again rose from his stooping posture they had all departed. 
The woman had not moved. He said : " Where are those your 
accusers ? Has no man condemned you ? " She answered : 
" No, sir." — u Neither do I," said Jesus ; " go, and sin no more." 
She had sinned. He had no license to give to sin. Whether the 
popular opinion, or even his indulgence, should withhold condem- 
nation, her only safety was in abstaining from sin. Nothing could 
have won her from the downward course on which she had en- 
tered so much as this exquisite tenderness of Jesus. 

Perhaps, pointing to the huge lamps now kindled, he ex- 
claimed : " I am the light of the world : he that follows me shall 
not walk in darkness but has the light of life." 
On the spot his adversaries endeavored to coun- J^^J^™ 
teract the force of his teaching by saying to him : 
" You bear testimony concerning yourself ; your testimony is 
not true." As if they would quote him against himself, and 
urge that self-glorification was his aim. Jesus answered : " Even 
if I bear testimony concerning myself, my testimony is true ; for 
I know whence I came, and whither I go ; but ye know not 
whence I come, and whither I go. Ye judge according to the 



4:58 FKOM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

flesh ; I judge not any man. And even if I do judge, my judg- 
ment is true ; for I am not alone, but I and He who sent me. 
But it is also written in your own law that the testimony of two 
is true. I am a witness concerning myself, and my Father who 
sent me witnesses for me." Here is a claim to a mysterious origin 
and high position in the universe. The nature of the case was 
such that he was compelled to bear witness concerning himself. 
Nay, more, his very nature was such that he was compelled to 
testify of himself, as light, which shows the existence of other 
things, makes its own existence known. Moreover, they were so 
fleshly that they could not of themselves discern spiritual things, 
so that he was obliged to show them. They took a sinful plea- 
sure in discerning in man what they might condemn. He took nc 
such pleasure. He was not ready to judge and condemn men 
If they had been as free from this evil disposition as he, they 
would not seize every word he spoke as matter for condemna- 
tion. 

But when he spoke of his Father as being a witness for him, 

his enemies asked: "Where is your Father?" His reply was : 

w Ye neither know me nor my Father : if ye had 

Where is thy known me ye woll ] ( j have known my Father 

also." They must have understood him to mean 
that he felt a consciousness of being one with God. That cer- 
tainly was the claim which Jesus set forth. Whether he was mis- 
taken or not, whether he told the truth or a falsehood, — these are 
two other questions; but whether he made this claim is a ques- 
tion readily answered. He most manifestly did. And no one 
could find such a claim made by any man, otherwise very good 
and exemplary, without feeling that however mistaken he might 
be, he is unquestionably sincere in his belief. The whole ques- 
tion of the divinity of Jesus is narrowed to the inquiring whether 
his judgment was hurt by a false consciousness. If that ques- 
tion be determined in the affirmative, then we have these difficul- 
ties on our hands, namely, to account for a man so immaculate, 
so surpassingly good, so profound, so rapid and searching a reader 
of the human heart, that the like of him has never risen among 
the sons of men, — a being with such self-control, such vast powers 
of mind and wonderful endowments of physique, living the most 
resplendent of human lives, and dying a sublimest death of mar- 
tyrdom, and influencing the ages by his life and death, while he 



AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 459 

himself was inwardly crazed by believing himself to be one 
person while he was in reality another, — living and dying in the 
belief that he was God, while in point of fact he was really 
inferior to even any man who knows who he is. 

It was truth or blasphemy which he was speaking. From the 
standing-point of the Jews they must have deemed it the latter, 
and yet they had not the courage to lay hands on the man who 
had committed in their hearing the greatest crime possible under 
the theocracy. His good greatness seemed to paralyze them. 

Then said Jesus again to them : " I go away, and you shall seek 
me, and in your sins you shall die : for where I go you have not 
the ability to come." The Jews said: " Will he kill himself ? " 
He replied : " You are of those beneath ; I am of those above ; 
you are of the world ; I am not of the world. I said to you that 
you shall die in your sins ; for if you do not believe that I am, you 
shall die in your sins." They asked him, sarcastically : " Who 
are you ? " He replied : " What say I to you from the first % I 
have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but the 
Father who sent me is here ; and I speak to the world those 
things which I have heard from Him." John inserts the explana- 
tory sentence — " They understood not that he spoke to them of 
the Father, God." So utterly obtuse and fleshly were they that 
even these mystical utterances of Jesus were incomprehensible. 
Then he said to them : " When you have lifted up the Son of Man 
then shall you know that I am, and from myself I do nothing, 
but as the Father has taught me, so I speak. And He who sent 
me has not left me alone. He is with me, for I do always those 
things that please Him." 

Upon this many of the people believed on him. There was 
something in the words or in the manner, or in both, which 
touched them and awoke them into faith. But 
it was not very great or very intelligent faith, as M ^ any believe on 
appears from what immediately follows. He 
said to such : "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disci- 
ples indeed ; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall eman- 
cipate you." He saw that they were regarding him in a sensuous 
light, as a political deliverer from the Roman yoke, and therefore 
spoke this word to set them right. He had exhibited such cour- 
age in peril, and spoken so frankly of his consciousness of being 
one with God that they had begun to think that they might have 



4:60 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



been misled by his antecedents and his manner, and that this, 
after all, was the Christ, the Anointed, the Messias, — still connect- 
ing him, however, with their hopes of freedom from the Koman 
yoke. This speech, which claimed that all his triumphs were to 
be spirit ual, opened their eyes to their misapprehension. More- 
over, it touched them on the sorest spot of their hearts, as their 
reply shows. They indignantly answered him : " Seed of Abra- 
ham are we, and to no man have we been slaves at any time : how 
do you say then, ' Ye shall be emancipated V n So blind were 
they as to forget that their fathers had been slaves in Egypt and 
Babylon for generations, and that they were virtually at that very 
moment the slaves of the Roman Empire. 

Jesus replied : " I most solemnly assure you that whoever is do- 
ing sin is the slave of sin. And the slave abides not in the house 
continually. If, therefore, the Son shall emancipate you, you 
shall be indeed freed. I know that you are Abraham's seed ; but 
you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I 
speak what I have seen with my Father, and you then do what you 
have seen with your father." 

These last words seem addressed to the crowd promiscuously. 
It excited their anger greatly. If they had believed on him 
before, they dropped him now, and with vehemence replied, " Abra- 
ham is our father." 

Jesus said unto them, "If you were Abraham's children you 

would do the works of Abraham ; but now you seek to kill me, a 

man who has told you the truth, which I have 

J Scrns^stltm P " heard fr ° m G0(L ThlS dld n0t Abranam ' YoU 

do the works of your father." This still more in- 
censed them, and they retorted, " We are not born of fornication. 
One father have we, God." — " If God were your father," replied 
Jesus, " you would have held me dear ; for I proceeded forth and 
have come from God ; neither came I of myself, but He sent me. 
Why do you not understand my speech % Because you cannot 
hear my discourse.* Ye are of your father Diabolus (the Calum- 
niator), and the desires of your father you are minded to do. He 
was a manslayer from the beginning, and in the truth he has not 
an abiding-place, for the truth is not in him ; when he speaks a 



* It is important to notice the dis- 
tinction between \a\ia and A070S, the 
former signifying the outward articu- 



late utterance of the latter, which 
means a reasonable connected line of 
thought. 



AT THE FEAST OF TABEKNACLES. 



461 



lie he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the liar's father. 
But because I speak the truth you do not believe me. Who of 
you convicts me of wrong % * Why do yon not believe me if I 
speak the truth ? He who is of God hears the words of God : on 
this account you hear not, because you are not from God." 

Upon their claiming to be Abraham's children Jesus showed 
them that they had none of the characteristics of the spiritual 
descendants of Abraham. That was tantamount 
to a charge of spiritual bastardy, which they re- 1 ren0 ra ~ 
pelled by claiming God as their father. But 
Jesus shows them that they have not the characteristics of spirit- 
ual children of God, because they hate the One who has come out 
from God. If they were God's spiritual children the truth would 
be their vernacular ; but they cannot receive the truth ; it is as un- 
intelligible to them as an unknown language. He then pours the 
awful statement into their ears that they are the children of the 
Devil, who was at once a liar and a murderer, who in the begin- 
ning sought to destroy the race, and endeavored to accomplish 
his nefarious designs by a lie. The Jews showed this disposition 
towards Jesus — the lying, homicidal spirit — in that they sought to 
kill him, not for any error of thought or wrong of life, for he 
appeals to them if they have ever been convinced on evidence 
that he had done a wrong or made a mistake. It was a great 
claim. He challenges any flaw to be shown in his doctrines or 
life. And yet they hate him murderously. If they were of God 
they would hear the words of God ; but their failure to hear the 
words of God, which Jesus professed to speak, is proof that they 
are not of God. Then, they are of the Devil. 

Jesus rested his reproof on actual facts of which they were 
cognizant, such as their known desire to slay him. To his lofty 
rebuke they reply with coarse invective : " Is it not 
polite in ns to say that thou art a Samaritan, and Jesus char £ ed 

i t o v i mi • -i with having a de- 

hast a demon « I hey were going to throw at mon 
him the two hardest words known in Jewish quar- 
relling, just because they knew no harder ; but they sought to in- 
tensify them by saying — It is really a stretch of politeness to call 



* The word means "error" as well 
as "fault," mistake of judgment as 
well as sinfulness of life. So the word 
which I have translated "convicts" 



signifies to prove the fallacy in one's 
logic as well as to fasten upon one the 
charge of wrong-doing. 



462 FK0M FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

} r ou a Samaritan : are we not doing a "handsome" thing to restrain 

ourselves and go no further than to say " you have a demon ? " 

Jesus calmly replied, " I have not a demon. I honor my Father 

and you dishonor me. And I seek not my glory. There is one 

who seeks it and -judges." The mention of God's 
His reply. . , , \ ° . , . 

judgment arouses his compassions, and he says to 

them, " I solemnly assure you that if any one shall keep my word 
lie shall not see death through the ages." The Jews replied, " Now 
we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead, and the 
prophets, and you say, ' If a man keep my word he shall not taste 
of death through the ages.' Are you greater than our father 
Abraham, who is dead ? And the prophets are dead. Whom do 
you make yourself ? " This was pressing him to declare his exact 
position toward God and toward Abraham, — to reveal himself 
wholly in all his claims. He simply answers that if he glorified 
himself his glory would be nothing ; that his Father would bring 
all his glory to light, and that that Father was the God whom they 
professed to adore. He thus claimed to be the Son of God in an 
exclusive sense. He adds, " And you have not known Him 
[although you call Him your God], but I know Him, and if E 
should say I know Him not, I should be a liar like to you ; but I 
know Him, and I keep His word." He presents this as if he felt 
that they were urging him to deny his own consciousness, to de- 
clare that he was not what he felt himself to be, one with God; 
to assume a lower position would be to violate his own nature, to 
falsify his convictions, and to deny the truth of God. In regard 
to Abraham, however, he said, " Abraham, your father [as you 
claim], exulted that he saw my day, and he saw it and was glad.' 

This was an astounding assertion. They said with sarcasm, 
44 You have not fifty years yet, and has Abraham seen you ? " 

Jesus replied most loftily, as if from some far-off eternity, " I 

most solemnly declare to you that before Abraham was born 1 

am." If this be not the senseless assertion which 

Jesus before ^ j ews toQ ^ it tQ ^ jj. - g a declaration of the 

consciousness which Jesus felt of his being in ex- 
istence before time began, before measurements of duration had 
been discovered, in eternity, eternally coexisting with the Being 
whom he calls his Father, and whom we all suppose to be God. 

The Jews took up stones to cast at him, but he somehow hid 
himself from the frantic multitude and went out of the Temple. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 



"Where Jesus went, and how long he stayed in any place, are 
questions the answers to which escape our closest investigations. 
He travelled and taught. This is nearly all we 
can learn. There are certain incidents recorded Perha P s some - 

. where near Jeri- 

by his biographers which seem to associate them- cho Luke x 
selves with this portion of his history, and, even if 
we have missed their precise chronology, may as well be intro- 
duced here. They seem to show that Jesus was en route towards 
Jerusalem to attend for the third time the Feast of the Dedica- 
tion, a festival which celebrated the renewal of the Temple ser- 
vice under the Maccabees. 

On one occasion a lawyer stood up, with the intent, if possible, 
to entrap Jesus in his sayings. He put this question to Jesus : 
" Teacher, by doing what shall I inherit perpetual 

life?" To this Jesus returns two questions, im- T *! e law ^ er ' 3 

. , . . question, 

portant m themselves, and increasing their impor- 
tance by their relation to each other. Probably pointing to the 
phylactery of his questioner's robe, on which, as a lawyer, he bore 
the inscription of that passage of Scripture (Deut. vi. 5) which 
the Jews were accustomed to repeat daily, he said, "What is 
written in the law ? " His next question was, " How readest thou ? " 
lie calls his attention to the fact that a man must first know the 
words of the record, and that then the mood in which he exam- 
ines them will have influence on his judgment. So, before mak- 
ing answer, Jesus asked the lawyer what response he had been able 
to get for himself out of the law. His reply was, " Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and 
with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as 
thyself." Jesus said, " You have answered rightly. Do this and 
you shall live." 

Perhaps this touched him as an intimation that his life had 



i 



464 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



been in fault, and therefore he could not understand the profound 
spiritual subjects which he had brought forward for discourse. 
He may have felt piqued, and to make return gave Jesus what 
perhaps he intended to be a quiet touch of sarcasm by the ques- 
tion, " And who is my neighbor ? " As if he had said that he had 
kept the law, unless Jesus gave to the term neighbor perhaps a 
meaning not altogether accepted among his people, thus covertly 
seeking to rebuke him for his too great laxity in mingling with 
the hated Samaritan race. 

Jesus replied in the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. 

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell 

among thieves, who both stripped and wounded 

Parable of the M and departed leaving n i m h a lf deacL By a 
Good Samaritan. \ . . . 

contingency a certain priest was going down that 
way : and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. And 
likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed 
by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, 

came to where he was, and, see- 
ing him, was moved with com- 
passion, and coming to him he 
bound up his wounds, pouring 
in oil and wine, and set him on 
his own beast, and brought him 
to an inn, and took care of him. 
penny. And on the morrow he took out 

two denarii,* and gave them to 
the innkeeper, and said, ( Take 
care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come 
again I will repay thee.' " 

Then Jesus submitted to the lawyer the question, " Which of 
these three seems to thee to have been neighbor to him that fell 
among the thieves ? " And he replied, " He who showed mercy 
on him." Jesus said, " Go, and do thou likewise." 

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was proverbially perilous 




* To English readers of this parable 
the generosity of the Samaritan in leav- 
ing two pennies with the landlord seems 
to be a small thing. But let us recollect 
that each denarius represented a day's 
labor. It would surely not be considered 
a small thing if a New York laboring 



man should humanely take up a poor 
fellow who had been maimed, and leave 
ten dollars to meet his expenses. Per- 
haps ten dollars now in New York would 
be a fair representative of two denarii in 
Palestine in the days of Jesus. It was 
a liberal provision. 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 465 

by reason of being the resort of highwaymen. Of this Josephus 

(B. J., iv. 8, 3) informs ns. The priests and Levites who lived in 

Jericho and officiated in Jerusalem were accns- 

„ From Jerusalem 

tomed to take the longer and safer road by way or. to Jericho 
Bethlehem, but on this occasion they had chosen 
the shorter route. Their guilt is increased by the fact that the} 
examined the condition of the wounded man and found it to be 
so very desperate, and yet their selfish love of safety drowned the 
voice of conscience and humanity in their hearts. If the lawyer 
thought it was not the correct and regular thing for a Jew to 
show mercy to a Samaritan, Jesus showed him the beautiful 
picture of a Samaritan putting his own life in peril to save a man 
whom he considered a heretic, and whom he knew to be his na- 
tional enemy. 

If the wounded man, however, was not a Jew, — and Jesus does 
not say he was, — then the Samaritan is represented as having the 
widest possible humanity. He had met a man ■ 

x J , A lesson of wide 

who was a stranger. He did not have even the humanity 
pleasure which comes from helping an enemy, 
which is always an intense personal gratification of one's own 
nobleness. The person before him presented only two claims to 
his attention and his kindness, namely, he was a man, and in trouble. 
Here was the very widest humanity. But we know that the helper 
was a Samaritan, and by introducing this feature into the picture 
Jesus taught that it is possible to have humanity with heterodoxy, 
and to have orthodoxy without humanity ; and he also teaches 
that if a man's orthodoxy do not beget humanity it is barrenly 
worthless ; that humanity is superior to orthodoxy, and inhumanity 
is worse than heterodoxy. 

The beauty of this parable in an sesthetical view, its graphic- 
ness, its fulness, its wideness and completeness of action, its 
genuine humaneness, are all heightened by the fact that this great 
Teacher, who selected the Samaritan to be the model of neighborly 
behavior, had himself been recently insulted and rejected by the 
Samaritans. 

It would seem to have been on this journey to the Feast of Dedi- 
cation that Jesus and his followers went to the little neighboring 
village of Bethany, to meet a household consisting of three per- 
sons, two sisters and a younger brother, of whom we shall have 
•nore to say hereafter. This family seems to have attracted and 
30 



Bethany. Mary 
and Martha. Luke 



466 FTtOM FEAST OP TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

held the friendship of Jesus. The sisters were named Martha 
and Mary, the former probably being the elder and the keeper of 
the house. Their brother was named Lazarus. 
When, or how often previously, or whether ever 
before, Jesus had been in this house, we have no 
means of knowing positively ; but it would seem 
from the air of the narrative that Jesus had had some previous 
intercourse with this interesting domestic circle. 

Jesus had come into the house tired with travel and preaching. 
His reception by the sisters shows the difference in their tempera- 
ments. Mary sat at his feet, listening lovingly to his words. 




Mary was receptive. But Martha went bustling about the house, 
preparing many things, intent upon giving Jesus something of a 
festal reception as he came from his tiresome journey. At last 
her industry passed over into worry. She became cumbered about 
much serving. And then she became a little fretful. And she 
went from the kitchen to the sitting-room and broke in upon the 
^artv with the half-plavful, half-petulant speech addressed to Mary 
tm^ugii tjesus, "Dost thou not care that my sister has left me 
to serve alone % Bid her therefore " that she help me!" It did 
not occur to Mary that much preparation would be needed, aprl 
she loved Jesus so that she went straight into the sitting-room and 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 467 

took a stool at his feet, in the confidence of innocence. Martha 
loved him just as much, and knew that he must have something 
to eat, and water to wash with, and a comfortable bed. Mary 
thought of what she needed of Jesus. Martha thought of what 
Jesus needed of her. She was so anxious to get back to Jesus 
that she felt keenly how her work was depriving her of the pleas- 
ure and profit of the company of her illustrious friend and guest. 
Mary was having all the good of it. Martha was not envious of 
her sister, but she desired to have some of the happiness of that 
society, and if no one helped her she would lose it all. 

The reply of Jesus has generally been regarded as a rather 
severe rebuke to Martha, and a boundless compliment to Mary. 
I venture to say that it was neither the one nor 
the other. He did most probably convey in his t M ^ rtha 
tone, as is intimated in the repetition of her name, 
some dissatisfaction with Martha's course. It was, however, only 
the dissatisfaction of love, not of anger. He desired to have her 
there where Mary was. He loved the sisters equally. He was 
not satisfied that Martha should be worrying in the kitchen, and 
he should be losing her society. He did not undervalue care for 
his personal comfort. No man, sinner or saint, ever does. It 
was a token of her love substantially given. He must have ut- 
tered the words tenderly, with the tone of love, reproving love for 
putting itself to trouble. He did need food and a resting-place, 
but he also needed her company. And so, with a loving smile 
and a kind look that pleaded his love against his words, he ut- 
tered this sentence that had in it more of warning than of re- 
proof. 

She was in peril. She was undertaking too much for her means. 
That was making her over-careful. She was becoming distracted 
and worried, anxious and troubled. She was losing her self-con- 
trol. She was in danger of losing her whole enjoyment of those 
for whom she was working. Now, no true man can see his friend, 
especially if that friend be a woman, making over-exertion for 
his comfort, and be unconcerned. Unless he be entirely selfish 
he will interfere. So Jesus did as soon as she opened the door 
and looked in. 

ISTor did the reply of Jesus imply that only one dish was neces- 
sary. That is an absurd interpretation of his words. Nor did it 
mean that religion was that one thing. This is a mystical inter- 



468 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

pretation. The plain, common-sense meaning of this part of the 
reply is, that he required only one thing in his reception, namely, 
love of him. Martha had that. All then that was necessary was 
simple attention to his simple wants. 

What he says of Mary is not so much complimentary as defen- 
sive. We must recollect that. It was not a volunteered statement. 
Martha knew that she loved Jesus, and believed that Mary did 
too ; but thought that her sister had a very indifferent way oi 
showing it ; and Martha intimated as much. Jesus simply meant 
to defend Mary. He said, " Martha, you shall not take away 
Mary's share in this loving reception of me. She has chosen the 
part of goodness as well as you." The fact is, that the reply of 
Jesus w^as a sweet speech to both the women, and both felt pleased 
and improved by it. 

There is no record of what followed ; but I have no doubt that 
when Martha shut the door behind her, Jesus intimated somehow 
to Mary that she should go to the help of her sister, for he saw 
that Mary's peril was in the direction of quietism, as Martha's 
was in the direction of worry.* 

From Bethany Jesus went up to the metropolis. While passing 
he saw there a man who had been blind from his birth. f This 



* I venture to refer the reader to two 
published sermons of mine, entitled, 
Mary ; or, Religion in Beauty, and 
Martha ; or, Religion in Service. 

f I can unite with Dean Milman, 
who, in a note to the text of his Hist. 
Christianity, in loco, says : "I hesitate 
at the arrangement of no passage in 
the whole narrative more than this his- 
tory of the blind man." The Harmo- 
nists have two opinions, one placing it 
at the time when Jesus escaped from 
the wrath of his enemies in the Tem- 
ple, and the other in the time I have 
given it in my text above. In favor of 
thj former it may be urged that the 
narrative seems so closely connected 
that we can hardly imagine an interval. 
Moreover, we know that that conflict in 
the Temple was on the Sabbath, and that 
this healing took place on the Sabbath. 
(ix. 14.) The objection to that view is 
that Jesus evidently departed alone 



from the Temple, while at the healing 
of the blind man his disciples were with 
him. Archbishop Trench replies that 
it is easy to suppose that they could have 
extricated themselves as Jesus did him- 
self; but the Archbishop must have 
overlooked the fact that they were not 
present at that violent interview. The 
argument from the Sabbath is not con- 
clusive, because the conflict took place 
on a festal Sabbath, and this healing on 
a regular weekly Sabbath. Both might 
have fallen on the same day, but it is 
not known that they did. I have been 
inclined to place it where it stands in 
the text, because the connection of the 
conclusion of the narrative seems to 
me quite as close as that which is urged 
for the beginning, and the conclusion 
(John x. 22) connects itself with the 
Feast of Dedication, at which his disci- 
ples were with him, as they were not 
on the former occasion. Moreover, a 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 



469 



was the first time that the disciples were in Jerusalem with Jesus. 

As they were passing a certain place they saw a man who had 

been blind from his birth. It occurred to the 

disciples to extract from their Teacher some v1 . e ^ usa em ' T . e 
i . blind man. John 

light on a dark difficulty, as old as the history o± ^ 

human thought. 

Traces of the profound study given by men to such questions 

as the existence of evil in the universe of the good God ; the 

transmission, if not of mental and moral traits, 

„ , . , . , • Existence of evil, 

at least of penalties ; the connection between sin 

and suffering ; and kindred problems, are almost everywhere in 
the stream of recorded thought, as far up towards the fountain- 
head as the literature of the world enables us to ascend. It is 
probably impossible to say when men first began to have these 
conceptions in shapely manner in their minds. But this much is 
certain, that very early in the history of human society we discover 
that the doctrine of retribution was not held merely loosely 
as hypothesis, but was imbedded in the human mind, and spring- 
ing up in all forms of human literature and art. The heathen 
classics are full of it. The students of the old Greek dramatists 
can never forget with what power it comes out in the writings of 
^Eschylus, the father of classic tragedy ; how he shakes his read- 
ers with the grand horrors of the Prometheus, the Agamemnon, 
the Eumenides y how in them and his other tragedies which have 
survived we are thrilled by the perpetual reproduction of ances- 
tral guilt, the punishment of successive generations of sinners 
who are pressed into the commission of atrocities by the doom 
which lay mountain heavy on their race. Nor will they fail to 



great difficulty lies against the other 
date, namely, that Jesus would scarcely 
have left the Temple in a secret man- 
ner, and then immediately perform a 
miracle which would attract all eyes to 
him at the moment of a popular tu- 
mult, nor would there have been space 
during the remainder of the day for the 
events to have occurred which are con- 
tained in the narrative. It is a beauti- 
ful thought that it exhibits his godlike 
calmness to be able thus in his own peril 
to stand still and work this beneficent 
miracle. If I were writing a poem in- 



stead of a history, I should take the 
other date, in favor of which are Lange, 
Olshauseu, Meyer, Stier, Trench, and 
Milman ; against whom, and in favor of 
the view I adopt, stand Liicke, Tho- 
luck, De Wette, Alford, and Rev. Mor- 
ris Dods, who translated and edited 
Lange' s k ' Life of the Lord Jesus Christ. " 
Macknight places the healing on the 
day of the escape from the Temple ; 
the recognition and subsequent proceed- 
ings during the visit at the Dedication. 
The reader must examine and decide foi 
himself. 



470 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

remember how the greatest of Greek dramatic authors, in his 
wonderful (Edipus, seems to attempt an imitation of the intrica- 
cies of Divine Providence, and the inevitability of the blow of 
retribution from the opening of the plot to the tremendous catas- 
trophe ; nor with what splendid diction and terrible beauty the 
same doctrines are set forth by Euripides in his wonderful PIicb- 
dra and overwhelming Medea. Indeed, the whole ancient classic 
tragedy surges with the heaving billows of sinful passion under 
the beating tempests of tremendous retribution. 

The ancient idea of penalty was personified. Nemesis, daugh- 
ter of Darkness and kinswoman of Shame, was the agent of the 

gods in the punishment of the violation of law, 
e ancien pa- an( j wag ^ Q special avenger of family crimes, 
gan idea. , . 

With the scent, the swiftness, and the certainty 

of a sleuth-hound, she followed guilt through all the windings of 
society and all the doublings of blood, until she smote it with the 
scourge that infuriated or the sword that destroyed. The skill of 
even Phidias was employed to embody in marble the popular con- 
ception of this personation of penalty. 

This same idea of the inevitable following of pain upon trans- 
gression, at whatever intervals and through whatever prosperi- 
ties, — from which was always made the illogical 
conclusion that no suffering takes place with- 
out sin, — lay dark and heavy on the Hebrew mind. In that sim- 
plest, grandest, and most solemn of all the tragedies, the book 
Job, we see a very powerful representation of this. A man serv- 
ing God with such consecration and such constancy that even the 
Almighty spoke of him as His perfect servant, suddenly topples 
from the pinnacle of human prosperity to the dunghill of the 
lowest debasement ; from surroundings of comfort, which made 
him seem like a secure god, into privations and pains which 
ranked him among the most pitiful of the feeble. When his 
friends drew near to condole with him, they knew him not. 
They beheld a blackened ruin lie where there had stood a palace 
of delights. The sight was so appalling that Eliphaz the Teman- 
ite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, lifted up 
their voices and wept, and rent their mantles and crowned them- 
selves with dust, and sat down with the sufferer seven days and 
seven nights, and never a man of them essayed to break with 
syllables the awful silence of that transcendent grief. And when 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 471 

they did, when they had taken a week to contemplate the situa- 
tion and study the case of Job, these three great men, whom Job 
had thought worthy to be his friends, embodied their philosophy 
in such words as these : 

Eliphaz said : "Who ever perished, being innocent? or where 
were the righteous cut off? Even as I have seen, they that plough 
iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same" Bildad said : " Can 
the rush grow up without mire? Can the flag grow without 
water? Whilst it is yet in its greenness, and not cut down, it 
withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all that 
forget God ; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish" Zophar 
boldly said : " Know that God exacteth of thee less than thine 
iniquity deserveth" 

And amidst all this intimation or assertion of secret sin, Job was 
without fault. But it was impracticable for these men to conceive 
it possible that there could be so much suffering and no sin. We 
know that Job was in the midst of prodigious pains which were in no 
way a punishment for either his own sins or the sins of any other. 

So when we come down to the days of Jesus and the passage 
of our text, we find the great Teacher confronted with a case of 

special privation, and his disciples plumply put 

X a- 4. J 4. u- «wi im • *i- "Who did sin?" 

the direct question to him : " Who did sin, this 

man or his parents, that he was born blind ? " Here is a sad case, 
a man who had never beheld God's great expanse of the heavens 
or fruitful field of the earth — a man who had never seen the love- 
light in the eye of mother or wife or child — a man to whom the 
angel rays of holy light had never come flooding in from all the 
forms of nature and of art, full of reports of beauty. It was a 
dire privation. It never occurred to the disciples to ask the pre- 
vious question: "Why came he thus?" They never question, 
their prejudices and their old ideas which they had received frorm 
their fathers. If they had ever read the book of Job they had; 
forgotten its moral. They presumed sin. Here is suffering, where 
is the sin ? Suffering has only one parent, Sin. All they seemed 
curious to know was, Who was the sinner ? It broke upon them 
like a new day on what they supposed the noon of their intelli- 
gence when the Master said, Neither hath this man sinned, nor* 
his parents. It was an utterance which smote the mouth of 
Poetry with the hand of Silence, and emptied the garnered treas- 
ures of Philosophy into the sea. 



472 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



What Jesus 
thought of it. 



It is not at all necessary to suppose that the disciples believed in 
the doctrines of pre-existence and metempsychosis,* or had even 
heard them. There is no sufficient proof that these Platonic ideas 
had spread generally among the Hebrew people, or that they pre- 
vailed to any extent even in the schools of the Rabbis. 

Here is the ray of light which Jesus let in ol one case, and 
which maybe applicable to millions: "Neither hath this man 
sinned, nor his parents ; but that the works of God 
should be made manifest in him." Not that the 
man had never committed sin of any kind, not 
that his parents were faultless, but that this blindness was 
neither punitive nor the result of sin. It was the grand rev- 
elation to the world that suffering may exist without sin, and as 
part of the working of a beneficent law whose sweep describes a 
circumference too large for human vision, but enclosing a vast 
field of God's benign operations ; of this circle, the segment, if 
visible to us, is too small, too fine a point, for us to find the cen- 
tre, measure the radius, and calculate the area, with all the aids 
of all the geometry known to man. Jesus says that a man may 
suffer for God's sake, and by the cure of the blind man and the 
results of that cure he demonstrated this blessed fact. 

Jesus added the saying, " While it is day we must work the 
works of him who sent us. Night comes, when no man can 
work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world." 
The proverbial expression " Night comes, when no man can work," 
simply meant that he who did not his work in the day cannot do 
it in the night ; that when a man neglects an opportunity to do 
what he should do, he cannot recover it : and Jesus applies this 
general principle to himself and his disciples. As he was the 
light of the world, what fitter thing than that he should open the 
eyes of the blind? So, he spat on the ground, and made clay of 
the spittle, and anointed the blind man's eyes therewith, and said 
to him, " Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." 

Anciently a virtue was supposed to be in saliva for disorders of 



* The doctrine of metempsychosis 
was widely leceived among- the Jews of 
the Middle Ages, especially among the 
Cetbalists, who explicitly taught that 
blindness from the birth was to be ac- 
counted for by this doctrine ; but we 
cannot learn that it was taught in the 



times of Jesus. Lightfoot quotes the 
Rabbins as teaching that the embryo 
might sin in the womb, and as quoting 
for proof the struggle between Jacob 
and Esau. (Gen. xxv. 22.) Tholuck 
believes that this was merely the pri- 
vate opinion of particular individuals. 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 473 

the eyes, as we learn from Livy (Hist. JVat., xxviii. 7). Suetoniua 

( Vesp., vii.) and Tacitus (Hist., iv. 8) give accounts of the restoring 

of a blind man by the Emperor Vespasian, and 

both speak of the use of saliva, the latter repre- , 1 anne 
1 r healing. 

sentiug the blind man as begging the Emperor to 
anoint his eyes with spittle.* Jesus himself in a similar case em- 
ployed it in the healing of a blind man (Mark viii. 23), and also 
in the case of one suffering from a defect in the organs of speech 
and hearing. He did not always, however, use outward applica- 
tions, as we see in the case of the blind man near Jericho (Mat- 
thew xx. 34). Why he did so in this case we do not positively 
know. Trench's suggestion seems good : " Probably the reasons 
which induced him to use these means were ethical ; it was per- 
haps a help for the weak faith of the man to find that something 
external was done." It may also have been a test of his faith, 
as faith was the psychological basis on which Jesus wrought his 
miracles. It could hardly have been to wash off the clay which 
would have obstructed the use of the eyes after the miracle haa 
been wrought, as this would not have been a sufficiently import- 
ant thing to mention, much less to command. The short history 
is, that " he went and washed, and came seeing." 

The recovery of his sight made so great a change in the appear- 
ance of the man that some of his neighbors doubted his identity, 
although they still saw a great resemblance to the blind beggar. 
When he affirmed that he was the very man, they asked him, 
" How were your eyes opened ? " He answered, " The man who 
is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said to me, 
' Go to the Siloam and wash : ' then I went and washed, and 
received sight." — "Where is he ? " said they. " I do not know," 
said he. 

The people noticed that the man had been healed on the Sab- 
bath. It was expressly forbidden by some of the Rabbins, accord- 
ing to Lightfoot, to put saliva on the eyelids on 
the Sabbath : in case of inflammation of the eyes, s b ^ a t ! 
Lowever, some did allow this to be done. There 
being some difference of opinion among their religious teachers 
and rulers, the man's neighbors brought him to the Pharisees. 
The wish has often been expressed that some miracle of Jesus had 

* Trench says that abundant quota- | in Wetstein, in loco. 
tions to the same effect are to be found 



474 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK, 

been submitted to judicial investigation. Now here is precisely 
such a case. Jesus had given sight to a man blind from his birth. 
The man was no fool, but rather a quick-witted, genial person. 
The best intellects of the nation employed themselves in investi 
gating the phenomena and circumstances of the case. These in- 
tellects were not credulous, but exceedingly skeptical ; not spiritu- 
alistic, but exceedingly materialistic ; not friendly to Jesus, but ex- 
ceedingly hostile. If it be possible to disprove the alleged work- 
ing of a miracle we have now an opportunity. Let us study the 
investigation and results. 

The Pharisees asked him how he had received his sight. That 
presumed blindness and a cure. The man admitted both, and to 
the point of their question, namely, the manner 
catechised. ^ of the healing, he replied, « He put clay on my 
eyes, and I washed, and I see." There must 
have been some peculiar quality in the clay, and if so it arose 
from the saliva of Jesus, for the same dust from which to make 
the clay, and the same water of Siloam, had been open to the 
use of millions of men, and yet no other blind man had been 
healed. 

This was so manifest to all his inquisitors that a schism was 
immediately produced. No one doubted that a very wonderful 
thing had been done, if there were no fraud or collusion in the 
case. Their hostility to Jesus came out in the saying, " This man 
is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath." But 
some replied, " How can a man that is a sinner work such signs ? " 
Here was a dilemma. The miracle could not be denied, if there 
were no fraud, and they could not give up their ideas of Sabbath- 
keeping so far as to accept a good man, although he had sustained 
his claims by a miracle. 

They turned again to the healed man and said, " What do you 
say of him, seeing he has opened your eyes % " This question in- 
volves the admission on their part that Jesus had given the man 
sight in some wonderful way, if his story be true, or else the ad- 
mission of that upon the man's part, or both. That he believed it 
was a miracle is manifest from his reply, " He is a prophet." But 
the inquisitors were not willing to be imposed 
ft-minftJ upon. They had no interest in admitting a mira- 

cle, but the contrary. They called his parents 
and asked them three questions : " Is this your son ? " " Was lie 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 



475 



born blind \ " " How does lie now see ? " To which his parents 

replied : 1. " We know that this is our son ; " 2. " We know that 

he was horn blind y " 3. " We know not how he now sees, nor do 

we know who has opened his eyes : he is of full age, he shall 

speak for himself." The Pharisees in Sanhedrim had ahead} 7 

agreed that if any man should acknowledge Jesus to be the Christ, 

the Messiah, he should be put out of the synagogue, that is, endure 

the sentence of the thirty days' excommunication.* Of course 

such a decree did not promote in any way the interests of truth 

or the interests of Jesus. The fear of it made the parents dodge 

the question. But we are not to conceive of them as heartlessly 

selfish, for they knew, as they said, that their son was a man, and 

they knew that he was very shrewd and ready. They were willing 

to trust him to take care of himself. 

He was recalled and put on his oath. " Give glory to God : wc 

know that this man is a sinner." This address certainly does not 

mean that he was to ascribe all the glory of his 

~ , , . ° 4 The patient put 

cure to God, and give no reverence to J esus, as on th 

Hammond and Jeremy Taylor teach. It was a 

form of adjuration, similar to that which Joshua put to Achan, 

(see Joshua vii. 19).f They pretended in his absence to have 

found the existence of fraud, and so they desire him to purge 

himself by taking an oath and telling the whole truth and nothing 

but the truth. While the man is not to be overcome by their au- 



* " There .appear to have been two, 
or some say three kinds of excommuni- 
cation among the Jews, greatly differ- 
ing in degrees and intensity, and our 
Lord often alludes to them, not as 
though they were a slight matter, but 
as among the sharpest trials which his 
servants would have to endure for his 
name's sake. The mildest was an ex- 
clusion for thirty days from the syna- 
gogue, to which period, in case the ex- 
communicated showed no sign of re- 
pentance, a similar or a longer period, 
according to the will of those that im- 
posed the sentence, was added : in other 
ways too it was made keener ; it was 
accompanied with a curse ; none might 
hold communion with him, no, not even 
his family, except in cases of absolute 



necessity. Did he show himself obsti- 
nate still, he was in the end absolutely 
separated from the fellowship of the 
people of God, cut off from the congre- 
gation, — a sentence answering, as many 
suppose, to the delivering to Satan ia 
the apostolic church. 1 Cor. v. 5 ; 1 Tim. 
i. 20. Our Lord is thought to allude 
to all these three degrees of separation, 
Luke vi. 22, expressing the lightest by 
the a.(pupi(€iu, the severer by the o</(5i£eu/, 
and the severest of all by the e/c/3aAAen/. 
Yet, after all, it is doubtful whether 
these different grades of excommunica- 
tion were so accurately distinguished in 
our Lord's time." — Trench. 

f Compare 1 Samuel vi. 5, and Ezra 
x. 11. 



476 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



His shrewdness. 



thority and influence of position, tie is nevertheless a little more 
reserved. He quietly but firmly answered, " If he be a sinner I 
do not know it : but I do know one thing, that being blind I now 
see." On theories he would not convict himself ; but he planted 
himself on facts. They could not shake him away from those. 
He was no fool and no coward, but he was careful. 

They then endeavored to cross-question the man, probably hop- 
ing that he would contradict himself or else say something which 
they could use to the damage of Jesus. They 
said, " What did he to thee 1 How opened he 
thine eyes % " This persistence began to arouse the resentments of 
the man, and he gives them a sarcastic answer. " I have told 
you already, and ye did not hear : why do you wish to hear again % 
Will even you wish to become his disciples % " Or perhaps the 
grateful man, intending to add himself to the number of the dis- 
ciples of Jesus, ventured to intimate as much to these persecutors 
of his benefactor and himself. This enraged them, and they re- 
viled him and said, " You are his disciple ; but we are the disci- 
ples of Moses. We know that God spake to Moses ; but this one 
— we know not whence he is." 

The man then began in turn to question and press them. They 
were the acknowledged teachers of morals and religion. They 
ought to be able to meet so plain a case as this. He said, " In this 
is the wonderful thing, that you [great divines] know not whence 
he is, and yet he has opened mine eyes. We know that God does 
not hear sinners ; but if any one be a worshipper of God, and does 
His will, him He heareth. From the seon [the beginning of time] 
it has not been heard that any one opened the eyes of one bom 
blind. He could do nothing if he were not from God." * 

This enraged them. The man they had endeavored to detect 

in a fraud became their teacher of morality and theology. He 

was cool while they were heated. Again they 

Enrages the in- ., , 1 , . -n-r-.i tit i 

qnisitors railed at him. With cnurcmy arrogance they ex- 

claimed, " You were altogether born in sins, and 
do you then teach us % " They charge that his blindness was 
God's mark upon him for his sin, showing him to be both physi 
cally and spiritually defective. They forgot, in their blind rage, 



* According to Grotins, opening the 
eyes of the blind was an acknowledged 
sign of the Messiah. Midrash in Ps. 



cxlvi. 8 ; Isa. xlii. 7. It was a miracle 
never known to be wrought by Moses 
or any other prophet. 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 477 

that they now admit that he had been bom blind, while they have 
spent their strength to show that it was all a fraud, which he had 
colluded with Jesus to perpetrate. Their verdict escaped in their 
wrath. Whatever else the investigation developed, it proved that 
Jesus had opened the eyes of one born blind, by anointing his 
eyes with a clay made of common street dust and spittle. Never- 
theless they cast him out of the synagogue and excommunicated 
him. From their days to this the churchmen, who are their suc- 
cessors, have sought to drive away and excommunicate those 
whose eyes Jesus has opened. 

Jesus heard that the man was excommunicated, and, having 
found him, said to him, "Dost thou believe on. the Son of Man?" 
He knew that that meant the Messiah, but he did 
not know who the Messiah was. He knew that 
the person speaking to him was Jesus, whom, however, he had 
learned to regard thus far only as a miracle- worker and a prophet. 
His confidence in Jesus was great : he said, " Lord, who is he, that 
I may believe in him ? " As if he had said, "I will receive any 
one as Messiah who shall be set forth as such by you." Jesus 
answered, " You have both seen him, and he it is that is talking 
with you." The man said, "Lord, I believe," and worshipped 
him. We cannot know the height of that worship until we know 
the idea which the name " Messiah " conveyed to that man. How 
much of God was in the Son of Man, the Christ, the Messiah, 
according to this man's measure of thought, so much of God he 
worshipped in Jesus. No man ever does more. 

Jesus said, "For judgment am I come into this world, that they 
who see not might see, and that they who see may become blind." 
Did he not speak this in a soliloquy? The tone indicates it. 
Reflecting upon the unsuccessful effort he had made to enlighten 
those of Ins people who were considered the enlightened class, 
but perversely preferred darkness to light, and contrasting this 
with the physical, intellectual, and spiritual illumination he had 
shed upon this blind beggar, it was natural that this reflection 
should occur to him. The blind through him found light, and 
those w T ho thought themselves enlightened were demonstrated to 
be blind. 

Some Pharisees near by, who had probably been watching him 
as he talked with the excommunicated man, now approached, with 
the question, "Are we blind also?" His reply was, "If you 



478 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

were blind you would have no sin ; but now that you say, ' We see, 
your sin remains " He varies the words a little 
Pharisees engage tQ make tbeir con( J emnat i on more pointed. The 
Jesus in conversa- „ , -i . i i -, -, -, . ", -, 

tion# tact that they claimed to be already enlightened, 

and yet resisted the truth, fastened their guilt 
upon them. 

Then followed a discourse which our modern professors of 

rhetoric would pronounce an outrageous mixture of metaphors, 

but which has perhaps never confused any learned 

Discourse of the Qr unlearned reader by itg shifting of figures, as 

shepherd and the . . J •-,.-, -i -i 

gk when at one time a person is described as a door 

who had at another been represented as a shep- 
herd, and again another person is represented at one time as a 
sheep and at another time as a shepherd. His relation to all true 
people as the true Shejpherd of the sheep, and the relation of all 
false people to him as enemies of him and of the flock of God, is 
what Jesus sets forth ; and this is a severe reproof of the religious 
leaders of his time. 

The Jews were descendants of shepherds, and still fed many 
flocks, so that they were familiar with the allusions to shepherd 
life with which their whole sacred literature abounded, and which 
abound in this discourse of Jesus. In the translation of this dis- 
course I have put many explanatory words in brackets to fill out 
the pictures to our eyes ; for the speech opens with a picture of 
a fold by night, with the night-watch on guard, and the thieves 
occasionally climbing over the low walls. 

" I most solemnly assure you," said Jesus, " that he who [as a 
pastor of the flock of God] enters not through the [appointed] 
door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief 
and a robber ; but he who [frankly] enters in through the door is 
a [true and genuine] shepherd of the sheep. To him the door- 
keeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own 
sheep by name, and leads them out. When he puts forth his own 
sheep he goes before them [into the pasture], and his sheep fol- 
low him ; for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not 
follow, but will flee from him ; for they know not the voice of 
Btrangers." 

Having uttered these sayings, he looked upon them and saw 
that they had failed to appreciate the intent and meaning of his 
words. He was determined that they should feel some of ita 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 479 

force, so he explicitly said : " I most solemnly assure you that 1 
am the door of the sheep. All who ever came [professing to be 
the Shepherd of Men and were not, such as your 
Pharisaic pastors] are thieves and robbers : but the . exp C1 say 
sheep did not hear them. I am the door : through 
me if any one enter he shall be saved [from false spiritual pas- 
tors], and shall go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes 
not, except that he might steal and kill and destroy. I am come 
that they might have perpetual life, and have it abundantly. I 
am the G-ood Shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the 
sheep. But the hireling [such as you], who also is not a shep- 
herd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming, and 
leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf catches and scatters them, 
because he is [merely] a hireling and cares not for the sheep. I 
am the Good Shepherd, and know mine, and mine know me. As 
the Father knows me, I also know the Father, and I give my life 
for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold ; those also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and 
there shall be one flock, one shepherd. On this account my Father 
loves ine, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. 
.No one took it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have author- 
ity to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This 
injunction have I received of my Father." 

It seems quite plain from all this that Jesus felt that he held a 
relation to all the good quite different from that held by any other 
man, and quite superior ; that such intimacy ex- 
isted between God and himself that he only, Relation of Je " 

, . , . . . sus to the good. 

together with those who came m his spirit, could 
bring men together, from Jewish and from Gentile folds, and 
bring all to God. He made another intimation of his approach- 
ing death, but claimed to have power over life and death, so that 
his sacrifice of himself was not the sullen, despairing abandon- 
ment of a defeated revolutionist to his fate, but was a voluntary 
enduran( e of death for a high object. It was this which made 
his Father love him, this high, heroic dutifulness. 

This profound speech, containing a sharp reproof of the un- 
faithfulness of these venal shepherds, made a 
great division among his hearers. Some said, A dlvl ** 10I i 
" He has a demon, and is mad." That is the im- 
pression, or something similar, made on all weak and shallow men 



4:80 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

by the discourses of those who are of very profound and lofty 
nature. Jesus caught them up so suddenly to such a lofty height 
that their heads grew dizzy. Others, not yet understanding him, 
but having strength of mind to maintain their self-possession 
in some measure, replied : " These are not the words of a de- 
moniac. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind % " They ap- 
peal to the well-known miracle of the cure of the blind man, 
which the investigation had established, and in which the people 
retained their confidence, although the man had been excom- 
municated. 

It was the Feast of the Dedication, kept in honor of the cleans- 
ing of the Temple and the restoration of the Temple service 
upon the deliverance of the nation by the Mac- 
cabees from the oppression of the Syrians, a.c. 
164. (See 1 Mace. iv. 52-59.) It was winter. Jesus was walk- 
ing in the Temple, in Solomon's portico. The Jews encircled him 
and said to him, " How long do you agitate us ? If you be the 
Christ [the Messiah] tell us plainly." It is a fact to notice that 
Jesus never, in so many words, declared his Messiahship to 
them. He does not now. His reply is : "I told you, and you 
believed not. The works that I do in the name of my Father, 
they bear witness of me. But you believe not, because you are 
not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, 
and they follow me, and I give them perpetual life ; and they 
shall never perish, and no one shall pluck them out of my hand. 
The Father who gave to me is greater than all, and no one is able 
to pluck them out of the Father's hands. I and my Father are 
One." 

The claims here made by Jesus are of the most exalted kind. 
The lives of all the good are in his hands. He gives them a per- 
petuation of their lives. Nothing can destroy them 
because he guards. This claims power over all 
the forces of the universe. God is above all, and Jesus and God 
are one. Such were his claims, right or wrong. He did not 
choose to declare himself to them as Messiah, for reasons which 
we can conjecture, but he does not hesitate to declare himself to 
be God. The infuriated Jews so understood him. Again they 
took up stones to stone him. He said to them, " Many good works 
have I showed you from the Father ; for which work of these do 
you stone me ? " Their reply was : " We do not stone you for a 



THE FEAST OF DEDICATION. 481 

good work, but for blasphemy ; because, being a man, you make 
yourself a god." If what Jesus had said was not the truth, then 
it certainly was blasphemy, and the Jews were not prepared to 
acknowledge the truth, and Jesus did not withdraw the claim ; 
but he did answer them by a quotation from Psalm lxxxii. 6. He 
said, " Is it not written in the law, ' I said, You are gods V If he 
called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scrip- 
ture cannot be broken, do you say to him whom the Father has 
sanctified and sent into the world, ' Thou blasphemest,' because I 
said, ' I am a Son of God?' If I do not the works of my Father, 
believe me not ; but if I do, although you believe not me, bel eve 
the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in 
me and I in the Father." 

This speech of Jesus is an argument from the use of language. 
The phrase " Son of God " it w T as not blasphemous to apply to 
a man, for the Scripture did it repeatedly. But 
Jesus must also have meant much more than Supposed blas- 

, , , , , , , . P -i • -i • -i -i • phemous assump- 

tnat, or else be descending rrom his high claims ; fcions 
that the latter was not the case appears from the 
conduct of his enemies immediately upon the conclusion of the 
speech. It must be noticed that, in commenting on the passage 
of Scripture he had quoted, he made an argument involving this : 
If those to whom the word of the Father came were called " gods," 
it is not blasphemy for him who is the very revelation of the 
Father to call himself " god." But that he had not done in this 
mild and usual form ; he had explicitly declared himself one with 
the everlasting Father, and it was their inference — a fair and 
logical inference — that he claimed to be a god and to be the God. 
He now appeals to his works. If they cannot receive his testi- 
mony without such aids to their understanding as appeal to their 
senses, here are his works. They are the works of God. You 
ouo'ht to believe that he who does those things is in God, and God 
in him. So the Jews understood him ; so he undoubtedly meant, 
if we have his very words in this record. Jesus believed himself 
to be in God, and God to be in him, and himself and God to be 
One. 

When he announced this the Jews sought to capture him, but 
he escaped out of their hands. 
31 



CHAPTEE III. 

JN l'EREA. 

Jesus must have felt that the end of his career was approach- 
ing . He left the dense atmosphere of hostility, and passed 
across the Jordan into Perea, the territory of 
of Jordan"' John -^- er °d Antipas. The name Perea included all 
x> that territory lying along the east of the Jordan, 

extending from the foot of Hauran to the desert 
on the south of the Dead Sea. The river rendered the land fer- 
tile, so that it was a district of vineyards, and the proximity of 
the mountains of Gilead and Moab preserved the salubrity of 
the climate. 

Jesus came back to the place where John had had a revelation 

of the Messiah in the son of Mary. To the spot where he was 

baptized, but which he had never since revisited, 
Visits the place T . t . « . .,-,. ir > » , . 

-,, , ,. Jesus returned, as it to re^ird himself for his 

of his baptism. 7 & 

coming conflict. It was a region inhabited by a 
mixed population, and its distance from the capital removed it 
from the fierce religious contentions of the day. He might have 
a little rest from those conflicts. Moreover, the testimony which 
John had borne in his behalf was still remembered by the people. 
When he performed works which far surpassed even John's pro- 
phecies of him, the people resorted to him in multitudes, saying, 
" John indeed wrought no sign ; but all things that John said of this 
man were true." And many believed on him there. How long 
he stayed we do not know, but his sojourn was probably several 
weeks. 

The time was occupied by journeys and teachings. It is pro- 
Are there few kabl- e that it was at this period that one said to 
that be saved ? him, " Lord, are they few that are being saved ? " 
Luke xiii His answer was : 

" Strive to enter in through the narrow door ; for many, I say unto you, will 
seek to enter in, and shall not be able. From the time when the master of the 



IN PEREA. 4:83 

L -use has risen and has shut the door, and you begin to stand without and to 
knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' answering he shall say to 
/ou, ' I know you not whence you are.' Then you shall begin to say, ' "We hav 
eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.' And 
he shall say to you, ' I know you not whence you are ; depart from me, all 
workers of iniquity.' There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you 
shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom 
of God, and you thrown out. And they shall come from the east and the 
m est, and from the north and the south, and shall recline in the kingdom of 
God. And see, they are last who shall be first, and they are first who shall be 
last." 

The question was proposed by some frivolous person in the 
crowds about him, some person not yet enough attached to him 
to be called a disciple : Who shall be of the kingdom of the 
Messiah ? Now there comes forward in the reply of Jesus what 
we shall find repeatedly presented hereafter, the idea of the last 
becoming first, and the first falling behind. Many would like to 
be of the kingdom of God, but are not able to enter in, simply 
because they do not take the legitimate measures. They " are 
not able " to break into the kingdom nor to sneak into it, and 
these are the only ways they try. He represented their final for- 
lornness by the picture of a head of a household whose family 
had been wandering about beyond the hour for retiring, and his 
resolute determination that if they would not keep his regulations 
they should stay outside. No matter what the privileges of any 
man, if he do not come in God's ways he cannot come at all ; and 
no matter whence a man may come, if he come aright he shall 
have admittance. 

The same day certain of the Pharisees came and said to him, 
" Depart hence, for Herod desires to kill you." They invented 
the story to induce Jesus to leave, or they had reason to know 
that Herod had animosity towards the Teacher. This latter is 
quite compatible with his desire to see Jesus. Natures like 
Herod's are fitful. Jesus seems to have received the statement 
as a message from Herod, since he made this reply : " Go and tell 
that fox, Behold, I cast out demons and I do cures to-day and to- 
morrow, and the third day bring them to an end. Nevertheless, 
I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the following : for it can- 
not be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem ! " This was not 
the language of precision, but of irony and melancholy. John 
had perished by the hands of Herod, but as a general rule the 



484 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

hatred which produced martyrdom had its seat at the nation's 
ecclesiastical headquarters, Jerusalem. 

It was while engaged in this work that Jesus received the news 
of the illness of his friend Lazarus. Upon receiving the message 
he said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of 
God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby." 

Notwithstanding this news Jesus accepted an invitation to eat 

with a Pharisee on the Sabbath. This Pharisee was probably 

a member of the Sanhedrim or a president of the 

e ropsica S y na2 . 02:ue as h e j s ca lled one of the rulers of the 

man. Luke xiv. -™ . A 

Pharisees. At that dinner was a man who had 
the dropsy. The invitation was not an honest one, as the Phari- 
sees were lying in wait to find something against Jesus, and this 
man may have been placed there for the very purpose of trapping 
Jesus into doing something on the Sabbath ; but the man himself 
does not seem to have had any sinister intent. Jesus knew the 
thoughts of the company, and asked this question : " Is it lawful 
to heal on the Sabbath-day or not ? " And they were silent. 
The question was incisive, was such as answered itself, and 
made a defence for Jesus. He healed the man and sent him off, 
and uttered this further defence : " Which of you having an 
ass or an ox fallen into the pit on the Sabbath-day, will not 
straightway pull him out on the Sabbath-day ? " As if he had 
said, that if their compassion for the beast or regard for their 
property should lead them to pull a brute out of the water, 
surely he ought to be allowed to heal the human being who 
had the dropsy. 

He then addressed them this parable : — 

"When you are bidden of any man to a wedding, recline not on the 
chief seats, lest a more honorable man than you be bidden of him; and 

he who bade you and him coming shall say to you, 
On taking a low '@i Ye place to this one,' and then you begin with shame 

to take the lowest place. But when you are bidden, 
go and recline in the lowest place, that when he who invited you comes 
he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher;' then you shall have honor 
in the presence of them who recline with you. For every one who 
exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be 
exalted." 

The value of the parable is in the exhibition it gives us of the 
quick sight which Jesus had for all the small details of social 



IN PEREA. 485 

intercourse, and the lesson of simple, blithe enjoyment of plea- 
sures, not seeking distinction, letting the honor come, or, if it do 
not come, being happy without it all the same. 
He followed this up with an address to his host. 

"When you make a dinner or a supper, call not your friends, nor youi 
brethren, nor your kinsmen, nor your rich neighbors, lest they also invite 
you in return and a recompense be made you. But when you make a feast, 
call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you shall be blessed ; 
for they cannot repay you : hut you shall be recompensed in the resurrection 
of the just." 

Men sometimes invite others to their entertainments in order 
to be invited again. This Jesus pronounces wrong. He is not 
to be understood as teaching that a man is never to entertain rich 
people or kinsfolk, but that when he does so he has no recompense 
beyond the pleasure which the party gives him. If he will really 
have a reward from God for the feast, he must bid those who 
can never repay him, bestowing his hospitality for no personal 
advantage. 

Then one of the guests said, " Blessed is he whoever eats bread 
in the kingdom of God." The remark seems quite natural when 
we recollect that in the current Jewish notions the resurrection 
of the just was the same thing as the setting up of the kingdom 
of God, which was to be inaugurated with a great feast. It led 
to the delivery of the following parable : — 

"A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his 
slave at supper-time to say to those who were bidden, ' Come, for all 
things are now ready.' And they all with one voice 
began to make excuse. The first said to him, 'I have Parable of the Great 

° ' Supper. 

bought a field, and must go out and see it: I pray thee 
have me excused.' And another said, 'I have bought five yokes of oxen, 
and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.' And another 
said, 'I have married a wife, and on this account I cannot come.' And the 
servant came and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house, 
being angry, said to his slave, 'Go out quickly into the broad places and 
streets of the city, and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, the blind, and 
the lame.' And the slave said, 'Lord, it has been done as you have com- 
manded, and yet there is room.' And the lord said to the slave, ' Go out into 
the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may 
be filled. For I say to you, That none of those men who were bidden shali 
taste of my supper.' " 



486 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

The lessons seem quite plain. The kingdom of God is a feast, 
and men have been invited thereto. They decline to come, not 
on account of business, buying land and oxen, or marriage, as all 
these are lawful things, but on account of too much devotion 
to these things, and the failure to adjust their affairs so as to 
discharge all duties properly. The " compelling " the uninvited 
to come in, to fill up the places of the recreant invited guests, 
is readily understood when we reflect that these people were so 
poor and worthless and unknown that the messenger would have 
the greatest difficulty in convincing them that the invitation was 
for them. Rebuke to the Jewish nation was herein. They had 
declined the invitation of God, and now God would fill their 
places with the Gentiles. 

Great multitudes flocked to him on this journey. Luke reports 

that he gave them this description of such discipleship as he 

required, and enforced his teaching with striking 

ermso isci- illustrations, and the repetition of what he had 
plesmp. Luke xrv. *■' 

elsewhere spoken. 

This is the address : — 

" If any one come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, 
and children, and brethren, and. sisters, and yet more, even his own life, 
he cannot be my disciple. Whoever bears not his cross, and comes after me, 
cannot be my disciple. For who of you, wishing to build a tower, does 
not sit down first to count the cost, whether he has the means to finish 
it? Lest haply, after he has laid the foundation, and not being able to 
finish it, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, 
and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to war against another 
king, sits not down first to consult whether he is able with ten thousand 
to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, 
he being yet afar off", he sends an embassy and asks for peace. So like- 
wise every one of you who forsakes not all that he has cannot be my dis- 
ciple. Now, salt is good, but if the salt become insipid, with what shall 
it be seasoned ? It is fit neither for the land nor for manure : they cast it out 
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 

This was a sifting speech. It taught them that it was no holi- 
day amusement to be his disciple, but that it involved a subordi- 
nation of all the passions to their consecration to him. In using 
the cross as the symbol of self-denial, Jesus seems again to have 
given prophetic intimation of his death ; but in the minds of the 
disciples there could have been no such connection. Internally 
the erection of a Christian character is like the erection of any 



IN PEEEA. 



487 



Publicans and 
sinners. Lukexv. 



other great structure ; a man must lay his plan, he must study to 
know what is necessary to execute it, and he must assure himself 
that he has the requisite resources. The conflict of Christian life 
is like any other war. One must consider the opposition, and 
how and with what he is to meet it. These illustrations mean 
only to impress the necessity of entering on discipleship with am- 
[.^ubt determination to go forward to complete success. 

Then crowds of publicans and sinners drew near to hear him. 
Luke says, " all the publicans and sinners." He received them 
kindly, and taught them the ways of the kingdom 
of the heavens. This gave the Pharisees occasion 
to murmur. They said, " This man receives sin- 
ners and eats with them." In reply Jesus delivered those three 
parables of surpassing beauty which were to illustrate his favorite 
proposition, that the Son of Man had come to seek and to save 
that which was actually lost. They ought to be read consecutively 
without break, and so we give them. 

" What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, 
does not leave the ninety and nine in the desert and go after the lost one until 
he find it ? And when he has found it, he lays it on his 
shoulders, rejoicing. And coming into the house he calls ,. _ * ara e ° * e 

' J ^ ° Lost Sheep. 

together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice 
with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say to you, that like- 
wise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety 
and nine just persons who have no need of repentance. 

" Or what woman, having ten drachmae [140 cents], if she lose one drachma 
[14 cents], does not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till 
she find it ? 

. t -, , The Parable of the 

And when she ■ 

Lost Com. 

has found it 

she calls her friends and her 
neighbors together, saying, Re- 
joice with me, for I have found 
the drachma which I lost. Like- 
wise I say to you, there is joy in 
the presence of the angels of God 
over one sinner who repents." 

" A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 
'Give me the portion of goods that falls to me.' And he divided between 
them the means of living. And not many days after, the 
younger son, having gathered all together, took his journey 
into a far country, and there wasted his substance living 
profligately. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that 




DRACHMA. 



The Parable of the 
Prodigal Son. 



4:88 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

country ; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to one 
of the citizens of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 
And he would fain have been filled with the pods that the swine did eat : 
and no one gave to him. And coming to himself, he said, ' How many hired 
servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I am perishing 
here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will . say to him, 
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you ; I am no more worthy 
to be called your son : make me as one of your hired servants.' And he arose 
and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off his father saw 
him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and 
kissed him. And the son said to him, ' Father, I have sinned against heaven 
and in your sight. I am no more worthy to be called your son ; make me as 
one of your hired servants.' But the father said to his slaves, ' Bring forth 
quickly the best robe, and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and san- 
dals on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat 
and be merry. For this my son was dead and is alive again ; he was lost and 
is found.' They began to be merry. Now his elder son was in a field : and 
as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And 
having called one of the servants, he asked what these things meant. And he 
said to him, ' Your brother is come : and your father has killed the fatted calf, 
because he has received him safe and sound.' And he was angry, and would 
not go in ; but his father coming out entreated him. And he, answering, said 
to his father, ' Lo, these many years do I serve you, and never did I transgress 
your command ; and you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with 
my friends. But when this your son has come, who has devoured your means 
ot living with harlots, you have killed for him the fatted calf.' And he said 
to him, ' Child, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. But it 
was needful to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and 
is alive : he was lost, and is found.' " 



The connection and the climax in this series of parables must 
be noticed. They indicate a regular discourse rather than a col- 
lection of sayings. Ownership, in some sense, is the connecting 
thought. A lifeless coin, a living domestic animal, a son ; this is 
the climax. If the order which Luke gives was observed in the 
address, then it would logically seem thus : The recovery of a lost 
animal is a cause of rejoicing, — nay, even the recovery of a coin, 
— how much more the recovery of a son. Men are represented as 
the sons of God, and all sinful. Sinners are of two classes, — prod- 
igal sinners and puritan sinners, — those who gravitate toward the 
condition of outlaws and those who gravitate towards the condi- 
tion of sneaks. In some particulars the prodigal is worse than 
the elder brother, in many others the elder brother is worse than 
the prodigal. The yearning love of the father draws the wan- 



IN PEEEA. 



4S9 



derer home ; the goodness of the father bears with the son who is 
a hypocrite. In any case, when a hnman being is lost, God is the 
loser. This puts the appeal to every human heart on a higher 
plane than mere selfish taking care of one's self.* 
Then followed this parable : — 

" There was a certain rich man that had a steward; and he was accused to 
him of wasting his property. And calling him, he said to him, * What is 
this which I hear of you? Render an account of your 

, . . , , , , , , A , Parable of the Unjust 

stewardship ; for you can be no longer a steward. And steward Luke ^ 
the steward said within himself, ' What shall I do, because 
my lord takes the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to 
dig; I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, that when I am put out 
of the stewardship they may receive me into their houses.' And calling 
each one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first, ' How much do you owe 
my lord?' And he said, 'A hundred baths (866 gallons) of oil.' And he 
said to him, ' Take your bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.' Then he 
said to another, ' And how much do you owe ? ' And he said, ' A hundred 
cors (1109 bushels) of wheat.' And he said to him, 'Take your bill and 
write eighty.' And the lord praised the unjust steward, because he did pru- 
dently ;f for the children of this life are more prudent for their generation 
than the children of light. 

"And I tell you, Make for yourselves friends of the riches of injustice, 
that when it fails they may receive you into the enduring tabernacles. He 
that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much. If, therefore, you have 
not been faithful in the unjust riches, who will commit to you the true ? And 
if you have not been faithful in another's, who will give you yours ? No 
domestic can serve two masters ; for he will either hate the first and love the 
other, or he will adhere to the first and despise the other. You cannot serve 
God and Mammon." 



Perhaps we shall simplify the difficulties which many have 
found in this parable by learning to whom it was addressed and 
what it was intended to teach. It was not ad- 
dressed to the Scribes and Pharisees, but, as Luke 



Meaning of the 

parable. 



expressly says, "to his disciples." It was in- 
tended to teach prudence in the management of a man's spiritual 
affairs. The ordinary lack of this prudence he makes the more 
conspicuous by contrasting it with the prudence of men who are 

* See these ideas enlarged in my pub- Wiclif s translation, but unfortunately 

lished sermons, entitled The Puritan was changed in the common version. 

Sinner and Lost. There may be prudence without wis- 

f This seems the very best translation dom, for p:udenc3 is often a rascally 

of the original word. It was used in virtue. 



490 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

absorbed in worldly matters. Here was a steward to whom was 
committed the affairs of his rich employer. The bonds made by 
that steward, who seems to have had a power of attorney, would 
bind the master. He, moreover, lent the money of the master, 
and took obligations therefor. He became wasteful. Upon 
learning this the employer expostulated with him indignantly, 
and ordered him to settle up his affairs. This gave him time to 
think. But he did not delay. He went from bad to worse. He 
now resolved to rob his master. Calling the debtors together, he 
made a swift arrangement with them. They were not poor ten- 
ants, but rich neighbors in large business themselves, or else they 
could not have been trusted with such amounts of such costly ar- 
ticles as oil and wheat. He handed back their bonds, and received 
in return bonds for a much less sum. They were thus laid under 
great pecuniary obligation to this steward. They did not know 
that he was about to lose his place ; but he did. So when he was 
discharged he had ground of an appeal to them. When his em- 
ployer discovered what had been done, he complimented the 
shrewdness of a man who had been most dishonest towards him. 
It was only the forecast, not the dishonesty, that was praised. 

Jesus used the parable to teach his disciples prudence in regard 
to the future of their souls. A great difficulty exists in the say- 
ing of Jesus : " Make for yourselves friends of 
Friends of the ^ mammon f injustice, that when it fails they 
Mammon of un- . . "* , , . , ,, 

righteousness. m2i J receive J ou mto tne enduring tabernacles/' 
Money is represented under the name Mammon, 
and it has been said that this was the name of the Syrian god of 
wealth, as Plutus was in the Greek mythology. But no proof has 
been discovered of such a fact. It is called "Unjust Mammon," 
or "the Mammon of Injustice," as riches are ordinarily, not 
always, acquired in a sinful way, or used for purposes of injus- 
tice, or are in themselves delusive. The dealing with large wealth 
usually leads to some wrong-doing ; and, as Meyer says, " the 
ethical character of its use is represented as cleaving to itself " 
in this phrase in the parable. But riches can be used so as to 
secure permanent spiritual blessings. The disciple of Jesus who 
does not so use it is not as prudent as the unjust steward. Gen- 
erally his disciples do not ; and therefore Jesus says that " the 
children of this life are more prudent for their generation than 
the children of light " are for the world beyond. 



m PEEEA. 491 

The Pharisees, who were covetous, heard all these things and 
derided him. To them he addressed the following parable : 

" There was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, 
and feasted sumptuously every day. And a certain poor man by the name oi 
Lazarus was laid at his gate, afflicted with ulcers, and de- 
siring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich Luke XTi - Parabl8 
man's table ; yet even the dogs came and licked his ulcers. LazaruSi 
And the poor man died, and was carried away by the 
angels to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died, and was buried ; 
and in the under-world he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and saw 
Abraham from afar, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called and said, 
1 Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his 
finger in water and cool my tongue ; for I am in pain in this flame.' 

"But Abraham said, i Son, remember that you received your good things in 
your life, and Lazarus in like manner evil things ; but now he is comforted 
here, and you are in pain. And besides all this, there is a great chasm fixed 
between us and you, so that those wishing to pass hence to you cannot, neither 
can they pass thence to us.' And he said, ' I beseech you, then, father, send 
him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, to testify fully to them, 
that they may not also come to this place of torment' But Abraham said, 
'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' But he said, 
' No, father Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead they would 
change their minds.' But he said to him, ' If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, they would not be persuaded if one rose from the dead.' " 

This parable is not intended to be a revelation of the outward 
condition of individual souls in the spiritual world. Jesus takes 
the imagery of Jewish and Gentile mythology as 
the mere drapery for the teaching of most impor- n ® n lon ° e 
tant moral lessons. " Abraham's bosom " is a 
metaphor for a place of permanent rest in communion with the 
good. The whole parable is a short and striking drama, convey- 
ing most solemn and impressive lessons. The main lesson is 
the ruinousness of unbelief in a spiritual world, an unbelief 
which renders men selfish in this world, and engrossed with this 
world, so that they may b v e covetous as the Pharisees were, or self- 
indulgent as the rich man in the parable was. The Pharisees, so 
far from being clothed in purple and fine linen, were remarkably 
abstemious in diet and modest in dress. But penuriousness and 
prodigality are opposite sins, growing from the trunk of worldli- 
ness, that is, overestimate of the value of what addresses the 
senses, the one finding its pleasure in hoarding and the other in 



4:92 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

squandering, — and thus worldliness grows from the root of unbe- 
lief in a spiritual world. 

In the story two persons are represented as being in extremely 
opposite conditions. One was rich, the other a beggar. One was 
clothed in byssus, a linen which was sold in the 
wo men in is ^ me Q ^ j eSTls f or j^s weight in gold, and in gar- 
ments colored with the most costly dyes. The 
other did not have clothes enough to cover his sores. The one had 
a mansion with a gate ; the other was homeless, and laid about 
at people's doors, probably by those who desired to be rid of him. 
In comparison with the splendid condition of the one who fared 
sumptuously " every day," was the fact that the other waited to 
catch the crumbs which the servants of the former would .throw 
to the beggars and the dogs. These latter, such wretched dogs as 
prowl in Oriental cities, added to the humiliation of the beggar 
by being his only attendants, licking his sores, and thus making a 
contrast with the unfeeling human brother. The beggar was 
named Lazarus in the story. Perhaps it was suggested by the 
name of the friend of Jesus, whom he was soon to raise from the 
dead. 

That men may know that condition is nothing and character 
everything, Jesus transfers the scene to the under-world. Lazarus 
dies. He has no funeral. But after death he is happy. Angels 
escort him to the society of the good and blessed. The rich man 
dies. His funeral is a pomp. But he is wretched 
The same men m the under-world. He sees Abraham and Lazar us. 
iritg _ He cries to them for help. He had found his 

pleasure in physical delights. His misery is the 
want of them. He does not deplore his unbelief, but wants his 
tongue cool. He is a churchman even in the under- world. He 
claims Abraham as his father. Abraham acknowledges the rela- 
tionship, calling him " son," but showing him that that is of no 
avail to a Jew whose character is ruined by unbelief. The rich 
man's ideas of caste do not desert him in the under-world. He 
does not presume to ask "Father Abraham" to bring him a 
drink, but he requests him to send that beggar Lazarus to wait 
on him. The whole story teaches that in this world, or any 
other, a man is himself ; that death does not destroy his identity. 
The same prejudices and passions a man has here he has here- 
after. 



IN PEREA. 493 

Prayers to departed saints do not seem helpful. Abraham 
could not help the rich man. There is as great a gulf in the spir- 
itual world as in this. Men cannot cross and re- 
cross the line at pleasure. Lazarus could not help 
the rich man if he would. The rich man had not been specially 
vicious, may have done many things which he ought to have 
done, and for that he had received his " good things " in this life. 
Lazarus was not perfect, and had done many things which he 
ought not to have done, and he had received his "evil things" in 
this life. But the great distinction between them was that Laza- 
rus had built his character on a sure faith in the surpassing im- 
portance of the spiritual world, and the rich man had erected his 
on faith in the surpassing importance of the material world. 
And this difference is immense. 

The forlorn wretch would seem to have been anxious to prolong 
the conversation. He remembered his brothers ; but the way he 
speaks of them leaves us at a loss whether he was more concerned 
for them or more disposed to arraign God's providence. He desires 
the dead Lazarus to be sent on an errand for him, and to warn 
his brothers by telling them that there was a spiritual world. 
This means that if God had given him sufficient warning he would 
not have gone into that torment. The reply of Abraham is stern, 
and by it Jesus gives a powerful lesson for all time. God knows 
what kind and amount of evidence is necessary to convince those 
who will be convinced, and he has given it. He knows that no 
amount of any kind of evidence will convince those who do not 
choose to know the truth. The appearance of one from the dead 
would not be more convincing than the Holy Scriptures. And it 
must be noticed' that almost immediately after this he raised Laz- 
arus from the grave. A man who had been four days dead came 
back, and had no more influence upon the unbelieving Jews than 
Jesus had, or the writings of Moses. 

There may have been, many suppose there was, in this parable 
'a lesson for nations — the rich man representing the Jews and Laz- 
arus the Gentiles. The spiritual contrast, as to privileges, is as 
great in one case as in another. The Gentiles shall become the 
children of Abraham by faith, while the Jews shall be cast out. 
Perhaps he did mean that also, but it is not quite apparent, and 
we have given above what we think the clear-sighted hearers of 
Jesus must have felt to be the meaning of the speaker. 



4:94 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

It was probably in this connection that he made the following 
address to his disciples : — 

" It is impossible for causes of offence not to come ; but woe to him through 
whom they come ! It were better for him that a millstone were hung round 
Luke xvii. On of- ^ s nec k, and he cast into the sea, than that he should cause 
fences, forgiveness, and one of these little ones to offend. Take heed to your- 
faith " selves : If your brother trespass, admonish him ; and if 

he change his mind, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven 
times in a day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I change my mind ; 
thou shalt forgive him." 

Then the apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." And 
the Lord said — 

"If ye have faith as a grain of mustard, ye might say to this sycamine- 
tree, Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea ; and it would have obeyed 
you. But who of you, having a slave ploughing or tending flocks, will 
say to him, when he is come from the field, ' Gro imnlediately and recline to 
eat ? ' And will not rather say to him, ' Make ready wherewith I may sup, 
and gird thyself, and serve me, until I eat and drink ; and afterwards thou 
shalt eat and drink ? ' Doth he thank the slave because he did the things com- 
manded him ? So likewise ye, when ye shall have done the things which are 
commanded you, say, We are unprofitable slaves ; we have done what was our 
duty to do." 

This address teaches the behavior proper among brothers. 
Through the frailty of human character men will offend, and, 
what is worse, will cause others to offend. It is a thing to be 
dreaded. But if one's brother commits an offence he must go to 
him kindly and admonish, and upon repentance must forgive him, 
and must do so just as often as the brother offends and repents. 

As this requires faith, the twelve who were near him united in 
a prayer for increase of faith, and it has been noticed that this is 
the only petition in which the whole twelve ever 
did unite. The reply of Jesus shows something 
more than the gross marvel which a literal rendering of words 
would indicate. It shows that Jesus believed there was a loftier 
circle of existence, in which faith represents what muscular 
strength stands for in this lower physical world, and, moreover, 
that in that sphere things are possible which are impossible in this, 

The disciples were always ready to go into pride, and such a 
picture of spiritual power Jesus tempered by calling their atten- 
tion to the fact that they were servants, and that as they expected 



IN PEEEA. 495 

their slaves to do their duty without feeling that they had laid 
any one under obligation, so when the disciples of Jesus had per- 
formed their greatest and best works they were to consider in 
humility that they had merely done their duty. 

The Bethany in Perea is about thirty miles from the Olivet 
Bethany, which is less than two miles from Jerusalem ; fifteen 
stadia says Luke. While Jesus was carrying for- 
ward his work on the east of the Jordan, Lazarus Sickness and 
., , T , i • i -i /• • 1 j> death of Lazarus, 

sickened. Lazarus was the cherished inend oi j^^ 

Jesus. Indeed, nowhere else in his history do we 
find Jesus enjoying the amenities of society in repose, and away 
from the glare of publicity which notable men of affairs must 
always endure, except in this household, which consisted of a 
busy, bustling elder sister, a gentle, thoughtful younger sister, and 
a quiet brother, probably the youngest of the three. Bethany 
was so near to Jerusalem that it presented Jesus a place of easy 
retreat, and it was so small and unimportant a village, lying nes- 
tled quietly on the mountain side, containing no residence of offi- 
cial personage, whether civil or ecclesiastical, that it afforded a 
safe and happy escape from the bickerings and contentions of the 
excitable metropolis. Jesus had put himself upon the footing of 
most respectful familiarity with this family, insomuch that Martha 
came to him with her petty household cares and the gentle Mary 
became his companion. These people were not desperately poor, 
but rather in moderately comfortable circumstances, seeing that 
they entertained company and were owners of a family burial- 
place. 

"When Lazarus sickened the sisters despatched a messenger to 
Jesus, saying simply, " Lord, behold he whom you love is sick." 
It was a request delicately embedded in an expression of trustful- 
ness. When Jesus heard it he said, " This sickness is not unto 
death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be 
glorified thereby." This was a declaration which showed that 
Jesus believed he could see the conclusion of this whole matter, 
and the results proved how correct it was. It was not merely an 
opinion of a case of sickness, expressed after hearing the symp- 
toms from the messenger, but it was of the nature of a prediction. 
It gave the messenger comfort to carry to the sisters. 

After receiving the message Jesus remained in Perea two days 
before he again alluded to the subject or made any change in his 



4:96 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 
• 

movements. He then said to his disciples, "Let us go into 

Judaea." They recalled the painful scenes through which they . 

had so lately passed with him in Jerusalem, scenes 

esus s re- w hi c h impressed them deeply with the feeling 
mains in Perea. , , . . pit 

that the intentions or the ruling party were most 
malignant. They replied, "Rabbi, the Jews of late sought to 
stone you, and do you go there again ? " His answer was, " Are 
there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walk in the day 
he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But 
if any one walk in the night he stumbles, because there is no light 
in him." 

There is in these words not only a lofty truth as to the special 
mission of the extraordinary man who uttered them, but an im- 
portant principle touching all human life. The disciples desired 
to prolong his life by keeping him from his enemies. He did not 
desire to lose his life in any sense, either by having his career cut 
short by his foes, or by his own departure from the line of his 
rightful work. He held that if he should protract the years of 
his natural life by keeping out of the line of his work, because 
the peril of death lay therein, his life would be lost in a worse 
manner than if he were killed in doing his work at the right time 
and place. He should have outlived himself, and thus have lost 
his life. The only safety and happiness lie in doing the assigned 
work, discharging the obvious duty. That is walking in the light. 
There is just so much of light and life, say "twelve hours." If 
a man fill those hours with the right work, he has gained life. If 
he omit, and then endeavor to go out in the night to work, he stum- 
bles. To apply it to himself: if his duty call him to Bethany, 
thither he must go, even if the Jews kill him ; for staying away 
is stepping out of the light of duty into the night of selfishness. 
If Jesus do so, he can no longer accomplish any good in Perea, or 
Galilee, or elsewhere. He must walk in the day. 

He then said to them, " Lazarus, our friend, is sleeping ; but I 

go that I may awake him." He knew that Lazarus was dead. 

Whether by the prophetic spirit that was in him 

He announces or -^ ^-g -j u( jp; meil t upon whatever description of 
the death of Laz- ^ J A , K ' . 

the case tne messenger may nave given, it is not 

important to decide ; but the fact is that Jesus in 
Perea knew that Lazarus was dead in the Bethany near Jerusa- 
lem. He desired to prepare the minds of his disciples for the 



m perea. 497 

dangerous journey, and so began to let them know the exact state 
of the case. They took his statement literally, and said, " Lord, 
if he sleep he shall recover." But Jesus spoke of his death. In 
all languages sleep is represented as the image of death ; but it 
comes with extraordinary beauty and force from the lips of him 
who is going to arouse the sleeper. Then Jesus said to them 
plainly, " Lazarus is dead, and I am glad on your account that I 
was not there, that ye may believe ; but let us go to him." 

The history here inserts a little incident which is very beauti- 
ful, and which sheds light on a certain cast of character. Thomas, 
called Didymus, turned to his fellow-disciples and 
said very pathetically, " Let us also go, that we ev0 10n ° 
may die with him." Thomas was a natural skep- 
tic, a constitutional doubter, a desponding soul. He required the 
most grossly palpable proofs to win his belief. But he was true- 
hearted and brave when he did believe. And of just such stuff 
do we find a certain class of doubters and melancholy men in 
all ages. Lazarus was dead. Jesus was going to die. The circle 
was breaking. "Let us all go together," said this sad, brave 
man. His faith could not reach to the heights of his Master's 
predictions, but his fidelity made him ready to follow that Master 
unto the death. 

Why Jesus should have delayed two days in Perea after receiv- 
ing the message of Martha and Mary we can only conjecture, and 
scarcely any theory yet presented seems entirely 
satisfactory. He did not idle. He was not en- la ^ y Jesus de " 
deavoring to while away time. In Perea he 
found plenty of work to do, and he chose to finish what had been 
so auspiciously begun. It is true that he might have left some 
disciples behind him and have returned. But he did not intend 
to return. His career was coming to its close. He read his cir- 
cumstances correctly. Moreover, he was never hurried. He had 
that self-possession which, when conjoined with high intellectual 
and moral qualities, is the measure of true greatness. He knew 
what he could do, and what he would do. And then he had re- 
spect to those, his dearest friends, whose spiritual improvement 
was a ruling consideration in this matter. He was working for 
the good of men and for the glory of God. He neither loitered 
nor hurried. 

32 



CHAPTEK IT, 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 



When Jesus reached Bethany he found that Lazarus had been 

already "four days in the tomb." It would seem that when the 

messenger was despatched by the sisters, Lazarus 

n et any near wag g ^ living. Such their message implied. It 

Jerusalem. . ••-■■© r 

was theretore satisfactory and consolatory to the 
messenger to hear Jesus say that that sickness was not unto death. 
He must have been greatly surprised when he returned and found 
Lazarus buried, and if he delivered the message to the sisters they 
mast have been sorely puzzled, for Lazarus had died in the mean 
time. This message must have seemed to them to show that Jesus 
had lost his way. He had said that this sickness was not unto 
death at the very moment when Lazarus was in his grave, for the 
Jews made haste to bury their dead out of their sight, and a 
prompt interment was intended to be an honor to the deceased.* 
When this message came to Martha and Mary it must have been 
a double blow. They had had such love for Lazarus and such 
confidence in the power of Jesus ; and now Lazarus was dead and 
Jesus was mistaken, or, if not mistaken, he did not regard them 
enough to come and explain his dark sayings. So it seemed to 
them. Lazarus must have died the day the messenger left for 
Perea, and been buried before sundown. That journey occupied 
a day. Jesus spent two other days in Perea, and the fourth was 
given to the journey to Bethany, so that when he arrived it was 
the fourth day that the corpse of Lazarus had been in the grave. 



* For proof that it was customary to 
bury the dead on the day of their death, 
see A.cts v. 6, 10, and Jahn's Archaeology, 
i. 2. In hot countries it is necessary to 
bury promptly because of the rapid de- 
composition ; and the Jews had the ad- 
ditional reason of being fearful of defile- 
ment by reason of contact with a corpse. 



Even now, in Jerusalem, the burial, as a 
general rule, is not deferred more than 
three or four hours ; and if the death 
occur so late in the evening that the 
burial cannot take place that night, it 
is performed at the earliest break ot 
day. 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 499 

The sorrow of this stricken family had called to them their 
neighboring friends, and also many Jews from Jerusalem, some 
undoubtedly sincerely sympathizing with these afflicted young 
women, others simply going through the ceremonies of condolence 
in a perfunctory manner, and others perhaps desirous of bringing 
back into the fold of orthodoxy these excellent women, who had 
been turned aside by the fascination and friendship of the young 
heresiareh of Kazareth. There was a crowd in the house. Martha, 
always busy and bustling, was in a position to hear of the approach 
of Jesus, aDd she hastened to meet him. Mary was sitting quiet in 
the house. The traits of character in each came out under the 
new and exciting circumstance of the arrival of Jesus. Martha met 
him first, and the words that burst from her lips indicate what had 
been the thoughts, and probably the sayings, of the sisters in his 
absence. " Lord, if you had been here my brother had not died ! " 

This speech is a study. Martha had had ample opportunity to 

investigate the character of Jesus. She had seen him both 

fatigued and rested ; had noticed him gazing in 

«.,,, . -. ,, . Martha's speech, 

revery far into the air, or down the mountain 

slope, as he sat before the door of her house ; had heard him when 
he was engaged in conversation with Lazarus or some of the dis- 
ciples ; had watched his intercourse with Mary ; noticed, as only 
woman's quick eye can notice, all his movements about the house, 
his dress and address, his dispositions of himself, his off-guard 
moods, his temper under provocation, and all those things which 
have been said to make a man cease to be a hero to his valet. 
The whole impression made upon her mind was that he was so 
holy as to have most intimate communion with God, such intimacy 
as gave him most extraordinary power, such power as would have 
enabled him even to push back death and keep her brother alive. 
But she did not know, it would seem, of the miracles he had 
wrought in restoring other persons to life, and did not imagine 
such a possibility as the resurrection of her brother. To Martha 
Jesus was a divine personage, but not Deity. To the saying. *' If 
you had been here my brother had not died," she added, proba- 
bly after a pause and a sob, " Even now I know that whatever you 
will ask of God, God will give to you." What she expected him 
to ask of God is not apparent. She was in the tumult of a fresh 
and great bereavement, swayed by hopes and fears and griefs. 
The spiritual elevation of every person who came within the 



500 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

circle of his influence was manifestly the design of all that Jesna 

did and said. To give back her brother simply, was merely to 

indulge Martha's natural desires for a season, leav- 

ig aims o j k er g ^ j n ~ rea £ distress because her brother 

might be snatched, from her again at any mo- 
ment. Her suffering, in that case, would have been such as 
Wordsworth, in his fine poem of Laodamia, has described to have 
been that of his heroine when the shade of Protesilaus was re- 
stored to her for a brief time and then withdrawn. As Olshausen 
has well said, it was needful that Martha should so ' recover her 
brother that it would be impossible ever to lose him again, and thus 
become rooted with him in the element of the imperishable. 
Jesus proceeded not simply to restore her brother, but to f urnisli 
her with a remedy against all forms in which death could possibly 
assault humanity, bodily or spiritually. 

Jesus said to her, " Your brother shall rise again ! " 
Martha replied, " I know that he shall rise again at the resur- 
rection — at the last day." It is to be noticed that she speaks of 
the resurrection as a doctrine currently received, and as including 
the restoration to life of all dead men, simply in virtue of their 
being men and being dead ; and also that this was to be accom- 
plished for all the race at the last day. As if she had said : " Of 
course^ as he has shared the fate of all men in dying, he shall 
share the fate of all men in rising." 

But Jesus taught her another doctrine and advanced a most 
prodigious claim for himself. He said : " I am the Resurrection 

and the Life. He who believes on me, even if he 
Jesus claims to were dead ^^ l{yQ ^ e Qne who j.^ 

bt the Resurrec- " . _ __ , J ■ xx 

tion and believes m me shall not ultimately die. He 

removes from the plane of natural causes both 
life and the resurrection, and declares that the power of both re- 
sides in him ; that he is the dynamical force of life ; that without 
him no one who is dead could possibly be restored ; and that those 
who are alive and have connection with him cannot finally per- 
ish. He represents himself as the fountain of soul-life and of 
the animal life that is in man. He is the life. He is Lifeness 
itself. If he bring himself to bear upon the dead they live. If 
he bring himself to bear upon the living, so long, through the 
ages, as this remains, they are not able to die. He is the Hesur- 
rection for Lazarus, and he is the Life for Martha. 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 501 

Upon this he appealed to her : " Do yon believe this ? " 
Martha did not unequivocally express her faith in this startling 
and immense claim, but she did reply, "I have reached the be- 
lief that you are the Christ — the Anointed One — ,„ „' 

J .1111, Martha's caution, 

the Son of God that was to come into the world. 

It was a noble thing in her not to give hasty assent to what she 
could neither understand nor believe. Jesus had uttered some- 
thing too deep for her, and then startled her by the sudden ques- 
tion, " Do you believe all this % " She could not say whether she 
did or not, because she was not sure that she quite apprehended 
the meaning ; but she did believe that he was the Messiah, and 
was quite ready to say that much. If that meant what Jesna 
meant, then " Yes, Lord ; " if not, then " Nay, Lord ; not yet that 
much ; but I have believed and do believe that you are the Mes 
siah." 

Having said this she went her way and privately sought Mary 
not choosing to let the Jews from Jerusalem know that Jesus was 
so near, for she must have known the intensity of 
the malignant hatred of the Jews towards Jesus. 
S le said to Mary : " The Master is here, and calls for you." When 
\) ary heard this she arose quickly and came to him. Jesus had 
n< -t come to the house, nor indeed into the village, but was near, 
perhaps between the house and the burial-place. When the Jews 
who were in the house, and had been endeavoring to comfort her, 
saw Mary rise up hastily and go out, they followed her, thinking 
that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary 
reached Jesus she fell at his feet — an act of homage which Martha 
had not paid, an expression of adoring love, perhaps brought sud- 
denly from her by the recollection that she had been sitting in 
the house while her dear friend was so near. She exclaimed, 
" Lord, if you had been here my brother had not died." In the 
identity of this speech with that of Martha, both coming out in 
the great emotion of the first meeting, we see what had been the 
tenor of their conversation in the absence of the dear friend. 
It was the unfortunate absence which occasioned all their trouble. 
The confidence in Jesus of these two women, who were so dif- 
ferent in temperament, is really affectingly beautiful. 

The outburst of Mary stirred the hearts of the Jews who had 
come to mourn with her, and they wept. When Jesus saw this 
deep emotion he was vehemently agitated. The language of the 



502 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES TJWITL THE LAST WEEK. 

original history (John xi. 33) intimates a complex mental condi 
tion, a combination of grief and anger, " he grew wroth in hi a 

spirit and disturbed himself ! " His S3 T mpathies 
The grief of the were intenge> He loved M He G0 { M not eR _ 

Jews. 

dure to see her suffer so keenly. These were rea- 
sons for tears ; but why should he be angry ? That is not so easy 
to answer. Neither Mary nor the Jews had done anything on this 
occasion to arouse his indignation. It is absurd to suppose that 
the mere death of Lazarus had produced this state of feeling, or 
that he had any regrets for his own absence when Lazarus died ; 
because he believed that he was about to raise him from the dead, 
and he had said to his disciples that he was glad he was not present 
at the death, because he knew that it was for the glory of God. 
We cannot very clearly discern good reason for his anger, but he 
ivas angry. It may be that an intense perception of all the wrong 
that sin was working in the race came upon him, and the discords 
and jangles of the world broke on his sensitive soul with a force 
that excited him violently. If this be not the explanation, we do 
not know what is ; but it is quite clear that the historian de- 
scribes him as angered. 

He said, " Where have you laid him % " They replied, " Lord, 
come and see." 
Jesus wept. 

On the way to the sepulchre the company noticed that manly 
tears were silently flowing down the cheeks of Jesus, like a shower 

of soft rain after a thunder-clap. Something 
Jesus 6 gnQ ° na( ^ ail g ere( l him. Now he was weeping. Some 

of the Jews said to others, " See how he loved 
him." And then, recollecting the case of the blind man in Jeru- 
salem, whom Jesus had restored to sight, they said, " Could not 
this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused even 
that this man should not have died % " It must be noticed that 
this remark shows that the restoration of the blind man had been 
settled as a fact in the popular opinion of Jerusalem. The spec- 
tators saw in Jesus unmistakable signs of affection for Lazarus. 
He had shown great power in the case of the blind man ; did his 
ability to save stop at that limit ? In that case he had been criti- 
cised for doing too much ; here, for doing too little. The anger 
of Jesus rose again, and exploded in a groan rather than in a ver- 
bal reply to their foolish gainsaying. 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CTRCUIT. 503 

The j came to the tomb. It was a cave. A stone lay against 
it. Jesus said to them, " Take the stone away." Martha shrank 
from the exposure and expostulated : " Lord, al- 
ready he " — she said with instinctive shuddering e &rave - 
and painful reluctance — " stinketh ; for he has been buried foul 
days." Here was a conflict between her faith in the friendly 
power of Jesus and her natural desponding disposition. She did 
not know that putrefaction had begun ; the word " for " shows 
that she had merely inferred it from the length of time her 
brother had been in the tomb. Jesus reassured her. "Did 
I not say to you that if you would believe you should see the 
glory of God." 

Then they removed the stone. Jesus lifted up his eyes and 
6aid, "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And 
I know that Thou nearest me always ; but because of the mul- 
titude which stand around I said this that they may believe that 
Thou hast sent me." This remarkable speech seems to be the 
utterance of a sentiment of internal spiritual communion, and not 
a prayer in the form of petition, although Jesus did make such; 
prayers. This was no "show-prayer." It was a Eucharist, a 
thanksgiving, such as was in his heart, and he chose to uttes 
it that the people hearing it might believe that he was the Sent 
of God, the Christ, the Messiah, or at least perceive that he 
believed himself to be such. The raising of the dead was the 
experimentum cruris, the final and indisputable test and proof 
of Messiahship. He accepted it as such. He had raised the 
dead at least twice before, in the cases of the daughter of the 
nobleman and the son of the Nam widow, bat never under cir- 
cumstances like these, in which the deceased was an adult, had 
been dead and buried now the fourth day, and spectators from 
Jerusalem, the seat of ecclesiastical authority and of enmity to 
Jesus, were present in a crowd sufficient to examine all the 
phenomena of the miracle, and to detect collusions and tricks. 
They were certain that Lazarus was dead. It could not have 
been an arrangement upon the part of these young women and 
Jesus. His whole character was such that not only would he not 
have entered into any such arrangement, but if they had desired 
to glorify the great Teacher by getting up a pseudo-miracle, he 
would never for the sake of friendship have yielded himself 
unwillingly to be part of such a scheme. Moreover, the grief of 



504: FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

Martha and Mary, as well as that of Jesus, was not feigned. If it 
had been, the Jews, who had three days for observation, would 
have detected it. They were so thoroughly convinced of the 
death of Lazarus that they themselves wept with Mary and ad- 
mired the tenderness of the friendship of Jesus. 

It was the crisis of Jesus. He stood before the opened tomb, 
and, with a loud voice, cried, " Lazarus, come forth." Then he 
who had been dead came forth, in just such 
e raises aza- pjjg^ as cor p Ses were customarily laid away in 
the grave, namely, with narrow strips of linen 
wrapped about each limb, so that while motion was obstructed 
it was not impracticable, and with a handkerchief tied about 
his head. So thorough was the restoration that he needed no aid 
to obey the command of Jesus, but walked forth into the pre- 
sence of the assembly. Jesus simply said, " Loose him, and let 
rrm go." That is, take away whatever encumbers him and let 
b m go home. 

One cannot fail to notice the absence of all parade and mum- 
bUng and incantation, as if this were the work of a magician. 
The history is beautiful on the side of the human passions, and 
sublime on the side of the simple exercise of power in doing 
what only God has always been supposed to be capable of per- 
forming. There is no indulgence of curiosity, no telling of tales 
brought back from the prison-house of the sepulchre, no marvels, 
no self-gratulation upon the part of Jesus, no sense of exhaustion, 
as if he had poured vital force from himself into his dead 
friend. The veil is dropped over any conversation Jesus might 
have had with his dear friend, and the most delicate silence 
preserved as to the display of feeling upon the part of Lazarus 
and his sisters at his restoration, and any loving thanks they may 
have heaped upon their benefactor. Even tradition does not 
venture upon repeating to us anything Lazarus may have been 
represented as saying of his sensations in dying, his experience of 
being dead, and his emotion upon the return of the soul to its 
seat in the body, and the reattachment of the cords of life which 
had been snapped. Tradition only tells us that Lazarus asked 
Jesus if he should die again, and when informed that there still 
lay before him the inevitable fate of humanity, he never smiled 
again. But there is no foundation for that. It is the unnatural 
fancy of some gloomy mind. 



JESUS ON HIS LAST dKCUTT. 



505 



History tells us nothing more of Lazarus. In the beginning of 
the second century many of those whom Jesus had both healed 
and raised from the dead were still alive, according to Quadratus 
in Eusebius (II E., iv. 3). From this great miracle the village 
of Bethany took the name of Lazarus, and to this day is called 
El-Azariyeh or Lazariyeh. 

Of the Jews who witnessed the miracle there were two classes, 
those whom this proof of Messiahship won to Jesus, and those who, 
overwhelmed for a season by this display of power, 
which seemed to be omnipotence, nevertheless 
had no intellectual or spiritual good from the spectacle, but went 
home chatting about it, or went to the priestly party repeating 
it, and asking them what they thought about it. Whether in mere 
gossip or through hostility, these people told the Pharisees what 
Jesus had done. 

The Sanhedrim was forthwith assembled to consider the state 
of affairs. Early in his public career the Jews of Jerusalem 
had sought to kill Jesus as a Sabbath-breaker 
(John v. 16, 18). Subsequently, in Galilee, the a J^ b ^ edrim 
Pharisees had conspired with the Herodians to 
destroy him (Mark iii. 6). The Sanhedrim had gone so far as to 
decree excommunication of any one who should confess Jesus 
as the Messiah (John ix. 22). Officers had once been sent to 
arrest him (John vii. 25), and the people generally believed that 
the party in power would never rest until Jesus should be put out 
of the way. Nevertheless the Sanhedrim had never formally 
decreed his death. But this raising of Lazarus brought matters 
to a head. 

When the council assembled, the first thing apparent to them 
all was their utter helplessness, so feeble is political power when 
opposed to moral force. The unarmed Jesus, 
having no authority— civil, military, or ecclesias- , , Th ® y . acknow " 
tieal — was gaining such hold upon the populace 
that they could put no arguments, no authority, no influence 
before the people to counteract him. They acknowledged his 
miracles. The greatest learning and the greatest authority in the 
law, quite as capable of detecting a trick, and quite as willing to 
expose a fraud as modern minds, admitted that Jesus did " many 
miracles." They did not deny what such multitudes declared they 
had witnessed, namely, his raising of the dead. Their utter 



506 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEES. 

spiritual stupidity is seen in that they felt themselves bound to 
kill Jesus rather than helieve on him. The latter should have 
been the rational conclusion, but "state reasons" prevailed. 
They should have said : He has done these great things as re- 
ported, or he has not; it is so important a matter that we may 
well afford to put out our utmost resources to settle that ques- 
tion. If he has done these things, then he is the Messiah, and 
we must hail him as such : if he has not, we must take all possi- 
ble pains to demonstrate to the popular mind that all this is noth- 
ing, and then truth will prevail. Instead of which they admitted 
that Jesus did perform many miracles, and therefore resolved to 
kill him! As if that were the way to meet an acknowledged 
miracle ! 

They said among themselves, " If we let him thus alone all will 
believe on him: and the Romans will come and take away both our 

place and our nation." This was the utter rejec- 

ey rejec 1m t ^ on Q £ j egug as their Messiah. In their opinion he 

as Messiah. . . . , 

did not have the force to push himself against the 

Roman power and overthrow it. He was not to be a conqueror ; 
and if not a conqueror he must not be allowed to go so far forward 
as to make himself a party, and excite the Roman power to take 
such measures as should lead to a popular uprising, which might 
be a sufficient excuse for the total extinction of the Hebrew 
nationality. That was their great state reason. They did not see 
that if Jesus had the power to work these great miracles their 
simple acknowledgment of the fact could do no harm ; and 
then, in any event, he that could raise the dead could repel 
the Romans ; and that if the whole affair were a delusion it 
would shortly die out, and need not be kept alive by the notice of 
the Sanhedrim. 

One of the members of this Council was Joseph us Caiaphas. In 
John xi. 49, he is called "high-priest of that year." The office 
of high-priest had fallen so low that it had lost 
nearly all that respect and almost awe which it 
had formerly inspired. Josephus tells us (Antiq., xviii. 2, 2) that 
Valerius Gratus, the fifth governor of Judaea, took the high-priest- 
hood from Ananus, also called Annas, and transferred it to 
Ishmael, whom he soon removed, substituting Eliezar, a son of 
Ananus ; that the next year he made another change, conf erring 
the office on Simon, who held it only a year, when it was given 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 



507 



to Josephus, surnamed Caiaphas (not Josephus the historian), who 
held it through the public ministry of Jesus. It will be readily 
perceived how the Pontificate fell into disrepute, and that the 
description, " of that year," was the mode of expressing the popu- 
lar contempt for the incumbents of that office. At the time of 
tli is history the more con- 
servative and orthodox still 
held to Ananus as the law- 
ful high-priest, although Ca- 
iaphas enjoyed the office by 
political favor. 

In this meeting of the 
Sanhedrim, this Caiaphas 
said. " You 
know noth- 



His prophecy. 




ing, nor consider that it is ex- 
pedient that one man should 
die for the people, and that 
the whole nation perish not." 
John says that he did not 
speak that of himself ; but 
that holding, however un- high-pkiest. 

righteously, this high and holy office, the spirit of prophecy still 
lingering about the breastplate which contained the Urim and 
Thumviini — the Lights and Rights of God — spoke through Caia- 
phas, prophesying that " Jesus was about to die for the nation, 
and not for that nation only, but also that he should gather to 
gether in one the children of God who were scattered abroad." 
The voice of Caiaphas, according to John, spoke what the mind of 
Caiaphas did not comprehend. His saying settled the question. 
The death of Jesus was decreed. It was only needful to deter- 
mine how to compass his destruction. 

Jesus was aware of the deadly intent of the ruling party, and 
so retired to a place called Ephraim in the common version, but 
spelt Ephrem in the Codex Sinaiticus, and, I 
think, there can now be little doubt, identical with 
Ephron. It lay in the wild uncultivated region, 
hill-country N. E. of Jerusalem, lying between the central t >wns 
and the Jordan valley. We are indebted to the late Dr. Robin- 
Bon for the recovery of this place, and its identification with the 



Ephron. John 



508 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

modern village of Taiyibeh. It is nearly twenty miles north of 
Jerusalem, and stands on a conical bill, upon the top of which is 
an ancient tower, affording a wide prospect of the wilderness along 
the valley of the Jordan, of the Bead Sea, and of the mountains 
beyond. To this place Jesus retired for a few weeks. It gave 
him a retreat from the multitudes, a respite from his &^gry perse- 
cutors, and an opportunity to instruct his disciples more thorough- 
ly in the principles of his religion. There may have been another 
reason. All his words and actions show that he knew that his 
end was approaching, and that his death would be violent. Be- 
tween this moment of retreat and that last fatal conflict he miodbt 
adopt some method to indulge the Messianic wishes of the friendly 
portion of the people, yielding himself in some way publicly to 




their natural desire to honor him. For all this he must have a 
season of quiet, in which he could undergird his soul for its last 
struggle, and in which he could so train his disciples that when 
he should be seized and executed they should not sully his dignity 
and embitter his last moments by any fanatical and useless out- 
break. Just such a retreat did Ephrem afford. 

Here he could not have remained longer than a few weeks, as 
lie must have entered Ephrem late in February or early in March, 
and the Passover occurred on the 7th of April. It is not probable 
that he went into neighboring villages, as he knew that the au- 
thorities were taking measures to arrest him. ftlis disciples were 
with him, and this last opportunity to be together apart from the 
people would be filled with profitable intercourse. He was quite 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 



509 



soon enough to emerge into a splendid publicity which should 

precede a terrible death. 

It was now the intention of Jesus to enter Jerusalem in the 

most conspicuous manner. Being near the Hue of Samaria he 

seems to have crossed and gone through Galilee 

_ ° ° Samaria and 

to the valley of Jordan. ^ Galilee Lukexvii . 

As he was passing along the border-line of 
these two countries, and was entering a certain village, there met 
him ten men who were lepers. This common misery had made a 
bond of union. It must have been an affecting 
sight to see ten men driven from good society, healed 
excluded from their own houses, standing in a 
body, forlorn and stricken, as if banned by man and branded by 
God. They lifted up their feeble and hoarse voices and cried to 
him, because the law would not allow them to approach the un- 
tainted nearer than four ells. (Levit. xiii. 46, and Numb. v. 2.) 
Their cry was, " Jesus, Ruler, compassionate us." It was not the 
word translated in the common version as Master, meaning 
Teacher, nor that other word translated Lord. The views of these 
men were not clear, nor, so far as they went, K orthodox." One 
was a Samaritan. They simply knew that this was the man who 
had exercised great power beneficently, and that they were the 
men who greatly needed his help. They called him " commander " 
or " chief." He looked at them across the distance, and simply 
said " Go, show yourselves to the priests." 

According to the law (Levit. xiii. 2) the priest was to declare 
when a man had recovered from the leprosy, but the priest could 
not heal the leper. So, when Jesus gave this direction to the 
lepers it implied that in their going the healing would come to 
them. They seemed to feel the authority of that tone. Like a 
platoon of soldiers, at the word of their commander, they wheeled 
and marched. As they went they were cleansed. One of them, 
on perceiving that he was healed, ran back rejoicing and glorify- 
ing God, and fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. " And 
he was a Samaritan," adds the honest historian. He was a heretic 
in his religious views, but full of thankfulness for the great favor 
bestowed on him. His " orthodox " fellow-sufferers, who had re- 
ceived the same gift of health, coolly went away, and never came 
back with thanks. It moved Jesus deeply. He said, evidently 
with strong emotion, " Were not the ten cleansed ? But where 



510 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

are the nine ? Were there none found returning to give glory tc 
God except this stranger ? " He said to him, " Arise, go your 
way : your faith has saved you." 

It is to be noticed that the faith of these ten men was the 
psychical basis of the operation of Jesus, and that Jesus always 
looked for a spiritual improvement to follow a bodily healing ; 
but it seems to have done so in the case of one of the men. When 
that man openly acknowledged the benefit, it was confirmed to 
him with an enlargement of the advantage. It is also to be 
noticed how greatly the popularity of Jesus had decayed. Not 
long ago the cleansing of one leper would raise the whole country 
side into a fervid excitement, now the sudden healing of ten men 
in a body creates no enthusiasm. It was a dark day in the public 
life of Jesus. 

Somewhere on this journey, we know not exactly where, some 
Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God should come. 
This seems to have been a taunt. His fortune? 
seemed rather waning than improving. For 
months, indeed for years, John the Baptist and Jesus had been 
predicting the coming of the kingdom of God, and, so far as these 
observers could see, there was no change in the aspect of affairs, 
ecclesiastically or civilly. His reply was, " The kingdom of God 
does not come with observation : neither shall they say ' Lo here ! 
or, There ! ' for behold the kingdom of God is (already) among 
you." This question and reply show how entirely unable to the 
very last the countrymen of Jesus were to comprehend his char- 
acter and mission, and to divest themselves of sensuous ideas of 
the Messianic appearance and rule. Jesus taught them that that 
kingdom was not a matter of external display and brilliancy ; 
nevertheless, as he said to his disciples immediately after, when 
it came men should not inquire whether it had come and where, 
because it should be as apparent as the lightning ; but it should 
be in the souls of men. 

Turning then to his disciples he said : 

" Days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of 

Man, and yet shall not see it. And they shall say to you, ' See here,' or, ' See 

there : ' do not go away nor follow them. For as the 

m e pre ic ion. jjgjj^jjjg lightens out of one part under heaven, shines 

to 'the other under heaven, so shall the Son of Man be in his day : but first, 

he must suffer many things, and be rejected by this generation. And as it waa 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 511 

in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man ; they 
were eating, they were chinking, they were marrying, they were given in mar- 
riage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and re- 
moved all. Likewise as it was in the days of Lot ; they were eating, they were 
drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were 
building : but the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained lire and brim- 
stone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day 
when the Son of Man is revealed. In that day he who is upon the house, and 
his goods in the house, let him not come down to take them away : and he 
who is in the field, let Mm likewise not return to the things behind. Remem- 
ber Lot's wife. Whosoever shall have sought to save his life shall lose it ; 
and whosoever shall have lost his life shall restore it. I. tell you, there shall 
be two in one bed ; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two shall be 
grinding at the same mill ; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two 
shall be in the field ; one shall be taken, and the other left." 

These revelations of troubles seem to have shocked the disci- 
ples. They ask in surprise, " Where, Lord ? " 

His answer is a proverb. " Wherever the body, there also will 
the eagles be gathered together." 

It is difficult to lay aside preconceptions and read sincerely any 
book which has been read over and over by us, and to us, from 
earliest childhood, with certain comments or presumptions. This 
passage of the teaching of Jesus has been an excruciation to com- 
mentators, who, in their turn, have submitted it to all kinds of 
violent wrenchings and twistings. It is a curiosity in mental his- 
tory how the destruction of Jerusalem can be supposed to have 
been taught to the hearers of Jesus. Any terrible catastrophe in 
human history can just as well be supposed to have been in the 
mind of Jesus. 

Let us put ourselves in their places, knowing nothing of Catho- 
lic and Protestant, and mediseval-scholastic, and modern-critical 
comments and theories, and listen to Jesus. The 
disciples had heard the Pharisees when they t heSono™Man 
taunted him with the question of the establish- 
ment of that kingdom which he and John had been predicting. 
He told them that it was already among them, but they had not 
the sagacity to discern it. The same question would naturally be 
in the minds of the disciples — " Yes ; when will it appear ? " He 
instructs them not to be carried away by outward appearances, 
attractive manifestations, and cries of false Messiahs. None of 
these things belong to the real kingdom of God, but are the mere 
outbursts of human passion. When we recall that the Goetae, 



512 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, by means of false 
promises of miracles, led many away into the wilderness to perish, 
Vi e can see reason for this warning.* He told them of his own 
suffering and rejection, and then predicted a Revelation of himself 
at some time, a Parousia of the Sou of Man, whatever that might 
mean. But there is a mystic air to this whole speech. In general 
it seems to teach that coming events do not cast their shadows 
before, that when any stupendous crisis in the world's affairs oc- 
curs there is little, if any, outward previous manifestation. It is 
like a dry rot in a house, which reveals itself only when it has so 
eaten away the substantial supports that the whole edifice comes 
to its fall. The flood was such a crisis. The destruction of 
Sodom was such. Up to the moment of the first plash of rain, up 
to the moment of the first hurtling of sparks in the hot atmosphere, 
in the one case and in the other, men and women went about their 
usual pleasures and businesses as if nothing extraordinary were on 
the eve of occurring. So shall it be at the Parousia of the Son 
of Man, whatever and whenever and wherever that may be. 
And men need not speculate on that. They can never know it. 
It has no harbingers. It is not in the field of such events which 
can be prognosticated. Men should simply be always at their 
posts, always doing their duty, and always right at heart. The 
Revelation of the Son of Man is a crisis, in the sense of a 
judgment and discrimination. It shall separate death from life, 
the dead from the living. Life is preservative. The birds of 
prey do not attack the living but the dead. Therefore keep alive. 

It seems that Jesus had in his mind the idea of some display 
of himself which should be of universal interest. But who can 
tell all he meant % 

Because of the troubles that were coming upon the world he 
spake this parable to his disciples, to teach them not so much the 
duty as the necessity of prayer, and that men should not be faint- 
hearted. He said : 

' ' There was a certain judge in a certain city, who feared not God neither 

regarded man. And there was a widow in that city, and she came to him 

saying, ' Avenge me of my adversary.' And he would not 

^Parable of the Unjust ^ & ^ me . ^ afterward he gaid within himself, ' Though 

I fear not God nor regard man, yet, because this widow 
troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she torment me.' 

* See Josephus, Ant. xx. 8, 6. Com- | and Acts v. 36, 37. 
pare Josephus, Be Bell. Jud. , ii. 13, 14, 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 513 

Hear what the unjust judge says. And shall not God avenge His chosen, who 
cry day and night to Him, even though He delay long with them ? I tell you 
that He will avenge them speedily." 

To interpret a parable it is necessary to know what is the 
pivot of instruction on which it revolves. And then it is not 
necessary to lind a doctrine in all the lights and 
shades of the picture, in all the folds of the drapery 
of the statue, of a parable. It has exercised sorely the ingenuity 
of some commentators that the good God should be likened to 
an unjust judge. JN r o such thing is done. The parable is intended 
to teach not the duty, not the beauty, not the profit, but the ab- 
solute necessity of prayer ; and not the prayer which consists 
merely of expressions of formal petitions, but the prayer which is 
the real and constant desire of the sonl. That only is true prayer. 
[t may be " always." It may sometimes break forth into words 
of devotion and even agonies of spiritual wrestling ; but men 
must always pray, and that constant spiritual pressure brings 
help. The illustration is from an unjust judge, whose injustice 
the commentators desire to modify, thus destroying the whole 
force of the parable. The stronger the judge and the more un- 
just, the poorer and the weaker the suppliant, the more impressive 
is the lesson of Jesus ; for God is not compared to this judge, but 
set in contrast with him. The badness of the judge is shown in 
that he was impious and inhuman — he feared not God, he had no 
regard for man. Not that he even said this to himself, much less 
admitted it to other men, but the soliloquy represents his prevail- 
ing strain of feeling. His petitioner is represented in the utmost 
helplessness. We have all learned the destitution of Oriental 
widowhood. This suppliant was a woman, a widow, poor and 
persecuted. The judge had no disposition to help her, and no 
reason in the world to do so, except that by the continuance of 
her prayer she should be a torment to him. In the exaggeration 
of selfishness he uses a word which signifies to make one black 
and blue about the eyes. She will overcome him by her impor- 
tunity. He grants her request, not because it is just, not because 
he pities her, but because of his selfishness, to save himself from 
annoyance. The argument of Jesus is this : If constant prayer 
can prevail against the selfishness of an unjust human being, how 
certainly it will find answer in the heart of the good God and 
Father. 

33 



514 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

Immediately upon delivering this parable Jesus added, "But 

when the Son of Man comes, will he find the faith upon earth % " 

It is an expression of despondency. It seems to 

, x , . intimate that when the Parousia of which he was 

despondency. 

speaking shall take place, when the Son of Man 
shall reveal himself, he may find faith in his coming so rare that 
the world shall not be prepared for it. The history of the race 
shows that humanity is never expectant the moment before the 
fall of some great influence upon its history. 

He spoke another parable, that of the Pharisee and Publican, 
which Luke reports in this immediate connection, and which the 
Harmonists generally assign to this time in the career of Jesus. 
Whenever spoken, I can see a reason why Luke should report the 
two parables together, as they are didactically connected, their 
teachings being of the same subject. This particular parable 
must be assigned to this general period of the life of Jesus, as it 
would naturally be suggested by the thousands of pilgrims now 
going up to the temple for worship. But it does seem that it 
would be more appropriate where there were Pharisees to hear it, 
than to be told to his disciples alone ; while, on the other hand, it 
is true that he had seen in his own family of disciples certain dis- 
plays of dispositions of which this parable is a corrective. Because 
I cannot satisfy myself of any better place for the insertion of 
the parable, I give it here. 

It was intended to teach humility in prayer, as the parable of 
the Unjust Judge was to teach persistence. The parable is this : — 

"Two men went up into the Temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the 

other a tax-gatherer. The Pharisee, standing, prayed these [words] : ' God, I 

thank Thee that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, 

Parable of the Phari- .■,-,, . T ,. 

•ee and the Publican, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax-gatherer. I last twice 
in the week. I give tithes of all that I get.' — And the 
tax-gatherer, standing afar off, would not even lift up eyes to heaven, but 
smote on his breast, saying, 'Be merciful to me, the sinful one.' I tell you 
this man went down to his house justified beyond that one : for every one 
who exalteth himself shall be humbled ; and he who humbleth himself shall 
be exalted." 

Luke says that this parable was levelled against those who 
trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised 
others. It is a graphic lesson. The Pharisee went into the Tem- 
ple. He stood to pray. That was no evidence of pride. The 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CTKCTTIT. 515 

Jews generally stood when they prayed, and the exceptions were 
when they became excitedly devout, so that to kneel would have 
been rather a display of ostentation. The tax-gatherer also stood. 
In several Greek editions occur words which in the common 
English version are translated " with himself," which some have 
connected with the standing as indicative of the " Separatists," " he 
stood by himself" St. Bernard alludes to this apparently proud 
isolation in prayer. But the words do not occur in the oldest 
texts, and are doubtless an interpolation. There was no intention 
to ridicule the man nor to exaggerate Pharisaism, but to contrast 
it with the simplicity of faith, and teach what Jesus from the 
beginning until this the closing period of his ministry constantly 
insisted upon, the superiority of simple faithfulness to one's con- 
victions over all devotion to mere forms of worship, — so that men 
might feel how much better it is to be the Penitent than the 
Puritan. 

This self-complacent worshipper addressed God in terms of thank- 
fulness which soon show themselves to be the thin veil covering 
his pride. He separated himself from all man- 
kind. He was one class, all other people another ; 

1 x ' prayer, 

and he was better than all others, whom he pro- 
ceeds to classify as extortioners, unjust, and unclean, — and then as 
his eye fell upon the tax-gatherer, whose business he regarded as the 
"sum of all villanies," he added — "or even as this tax-gatherer ?" 
And having purged himself of all charges that might be brought 
against his moral character, he proceeds to glorify himself to God 
in vaunting his discharge of religious duties, and even the per- 
formance of works of supererogation. " I fast twice in the week." 
Moses had appointed only an annual fast, the great day of atone- 
ment (Levit. xvi. 20-31 ; Numb. xxix. 7). But this man superadded 
two private weekly fasts. " I give tithes of my whole income." 
The law tithed only the products of the earth and the offspring 
of the cattle (Numb, xviii. 21 ; Dent. xiv. 22 ; Levit. xxvii. 30) 
But he was determined to exceed even the requirements of the 
law, so he tithed all that came to him in his business. He dwells 
fondly on these things, showing that he was doing them not for 
the glory of God, but for his own pleasure. He had no sins to 
confess. He had no worship to offer God. He had contempt for 
his fellow-men, even for his fellow-worshippers. 

But the tax-gatherer stood afar off. He had as much right tc 



516 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

the Temple as the Pharisee, for he was neither heathen ncr prose 

lyte. His reverence for God's holiness and holy places was such 

that it was enough for him to stand even in the 

pu cai i p rec j ncts f ^g k iy Temple. Perhaps he saw 

the Pharisee standing in a reserved but conspicu- 
ous place, and almost envied his fellow- worshipper the holiness 
which made him worthy of such a position, and felt that he him- 
self was not fit to breathe the same air with that man of God. All 
sights about him and all thoughts of himself conspired to humili- 
ate him. He would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven. 
He called himself " the sinner," by a word which means hardened 
in sin. Jesus did not depreciate the Pharisee. He gave him his 
full dues. But God is represented to have sent such a comfort 
into the breast of the publican, that, being forgiven, he left the 
Temple a happier man than the Pharisee, whose only comfort was 
in his self-complacency. 

It is supposed that now Jesus left Galilee, crossing the Jordan 
into Perea. His plan seems to have been to join himself to the 

great caravans of pilgrims thronging the Jordan 

Final departure va n e y i n their progress to the Holy City from all 

«. m * "ii/r i" the towns about the Sea of Galilee. If we may 

tnew xix. ; Mark J 

x rely upon Josephus, the multitudes that attended 

this feast were enormous. He tells that at one 
Passover, by actual count, 256,500 paschal lambs were slain. The 
smallest number of worshippers which the law allowed to each 
lamb was ten, which would make the number of participants in 
this feast to have been at least 2,565,000. It seems incredible ; 
but if allowance be made for exaggeration, still the number must 
have been immense ; and the roads that led to Jerusalem must 
have been thronged for several days before the feast and after. 

It was on this tour that the subject of divorce was brought to 
the attention of Jesus. He found the Pharisees everywhere his 
_>. enemies, and everywhere ready to entrap him. 

This makes this interview deeply interesting, 
since the case of Herod Antipas, who had put away his wife and 
taken a married woman to his bed during the life of her husband, 
made it politically dangerous for any teacher to discuss the law 
of marriage in the days and under the government of Herod. If 
Jesus should utter stringent sentiments and lay down strict rules 
of morality on the subject of marriage and divorce, he should 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 517 

probably meet a fate similar to that of John Baptist ; but if his 
utterances should indicate laxity of sentiment he should lose the 
confidence of the more moral and pious class of the commu- 
nity. 

In the reply of Jesus the attention of the reader is called to 
the fact that he does not answer as a judge or a legislator. He 
will not take up personal cases for decision. He will not lay 
down a canon for ecclesiastical discipline. He speaks as a moral 
teacher, and only as such. 

The importance of the utterances on this occasion, and the 

moral power of Jesus over mankind, is seen in the fact that we 

have a bare statement of his views spoken authori- 

_ .. -i i i -i i -i t The influence 

tatively as a moral teacher should speak, who has of Jesus 

the right to speak, and yet those few words have 
exerted a greater power over the whole course of human history 
and destiny, over literature, over political and social and domestic 
progress, than all the words of any other one man since the world 
began ! Is not that a sober historical statement ? Let any man 
reflect upon monogamy, the sacredness of marriage, the purity 
of the domestic circle, and this lifting of the family to a position 
which it never held in Greek or Latin or Hebrew civilization, 
from which it has had such power over the destinies of the State 
and the progress of religion, — and then let there be allowed to 
Jesus only such influence as he is plainly entitled to have acknowl- 
edged, — and who has, by so few words, sent his influence so widely 
and so deeply down into the heart of man, and down into the 
centuries % 

Certain Pharisees of the school of Hillel came to Jesus with 
the question, " Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for 
every cause ? " 

Let us look at what the Mosaic law of divorce really was. It 
is recorded in Deuteronomy xxiv. 1-4. 

" When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that 
she find no favor in his eyes, because he has found some uncleanness in her, 
then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in 
her hand, and send her out of his house. And when „. e - 1 osa c w 

divorce. 

she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another 
man's wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of di 
vorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house ; or if the 
latter husband die, which took her to be his wife ; her former husband, wliich 
«*ent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled.''- 



518 



FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



It is to be noticed that provision is made for the husband to 
put away the wife, but not for the wife to put away the husband. 
She had no relief, unless her husband committed adultery with 
another married woman, and then elsewhere the law of Moses 
provided that he should be put to death. Again, there is great 
uncertainty as to the meaning of the phrase " some uncleanness." 
This was a notorious subject of controversy between the schools 
of Shammai and Hillel in the days of Jesus. The former, it is 
generally thought, taught that it meant an act of lewdness on the 
part of the wife ; but this could hardly be, as that was punishable 
with death. Winer,* however, asserts that the Gemara represents 
the view of Shammai as less strict: "Even public violations of 
decorum might furnish ground for divorce according to his doc- 
trine." Josephus represents the views of Hillel. He sa} r s (Antiq., 
iv. 8, 23), " He who wishes to be separated from his wife for any 
reason whatever — and many such are occurring among men — ■ 
must affirm in writing his intention of no longer cohabiting with 
her." Knobel, in his Commentary on Deuteronomy, says, "Ervath 
dabar [in the common version translated 'some uncleanness'] is 
used of human excrement in Dent, xxiii. 13, and is properly a 
shame or disgrace (Is. xx. 4) from anything; that is, anything 
which awakens the feeling of shame and repulsion, inspires aver- 
sion and disgust, and nauseates in contact — for instance, a bad 
breath, a running sore," etc. He adds, "In the time of Christ 
[Jesus] the expression was in controversy. The school of Sham- 
mai took it as being the same with Dabar ervath [a thing of un- 
cleanness or disgust] , and understood it of unchaste demeanor and 
shameless lewd behavior. The school of Hillel, which the Rab- 
bins follow, explained it as something disgusting, or any other 
cause" This was, of course, giving the largest license.f 

To the question from the Pharisees, whether a man might put 
away his wife for any cause whatever that seemed to him sufficient, 
Jesus makes the following reply : " Have you not read that he 



* Quoted in President Woolsey's very 
valuable Essay on Divorce. 

f In the Tract. Oittin, fol. 90, it is ex- 
pressly said, " Even if she had only over- 
salted his soup; " nay, with shameless 
license, ' ' even if he should find a fairer 
one, in whom he has more pleasure." The ■ 
repeated rule in the Talmud runs : Hillel 



loosens what Shammai binds. Josephus 
shows the laxity of the times by coolly 
telling us that his first wife left him ; 
and that he put away the second, al- 
though the mother of three children 
by him, that he might take the third. 
— Stier. 



JESUS ON HIS LAST CTRCUIT. 519 

who made them from the beginning made them male and female, 
and said, ' On this account shall a man leave father and mother, and 

shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be __ . . . . 

1 J The original law. 

one flesh? ' So that they are no more two, but one 

flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put 

asunder." 

The Pharisees retorted with this question : "Why therefore did 
Moses command to give a bill of divorcement and to put hei 
away?" 

Jesus replied, " Moses, because of your hard-heartedness, suf- 
fered you to put away your wives : but from the beginning it was 
not so. But I say to you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, ex- 
cept for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery." 

It is noticed that frequently after a public discourse, Jesus was 
questioned by his disciples as to his meaning. For obvious pru- 
dential reasons they refrained from asking, in the presence of the 
captious enemies of their Master, questions the answers to which 
would relieve their perplexities. On this occasion when they 
were in private, the disciples reviewing his reply to the Pharisees 
said to him : " If thus it is the defect of the man with the wife, it 
does not profit to marry ! " He said, " All receive not this saying, 
but those to whom it has been given. There are eunuchs that are 
born -so from the womb of their mother, and there are eunuchs 
who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs w T ho made 
themselves for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens. He who 
is able to receive it, let him receive it." 

Now if we recall what Jesus said on this subject in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, we shall have before us all his teaching on 
this important subject. " I say unto you, That whosoever shall put 
away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causeth her to 
commit adultery ; and whosoever shall marry the divorced com- 
mitteth adultery." 

The first thing to notice is that Jesus criticises the Mosaic law 
as not being perfect, as not absolute, as not perpetual. It was an 
expedient. It was the strictest schoolmaster the 

t i j i mi , • n i Jesus criticises 

people could endure. lnere are certain fixed ., ,, . , 

r r the Mosaic law. 

principles, certain high ideals in Monotheism, to 
which Moses did not reach. But he did the best that could b8 
done for them with that people. Jesus ascends above Moses. He 
goes up to the origin of the race. He announces what God did 



520 



FROM FEAST OF TABEKNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 



and what God intended. The Father of all made man to be 
wedded. The oldest history of creation says : " God created man 
in his own image, in the image of God created He him, male 
and female created He them." (Gen. i. 27.) It is observable 
that it does not say that God created them a man and a woman, 
but " masculine and feminine," after the image of the God, who 
is at once both masculine and feminine. It requires the union of 
the masculine and feminine to make oneness in humanity as it 
does in divinity. God would be only a half-God, therefore no 
God, if He were either masculine only or feminine only. There 
is no completeness in any man or woman. The two are required 
to make one. The tie between husband and wife is closer than 
that between parent and child. In the beginning there was a 
single pair. The devotion of the one to the other, the absolute 
necessity of each to the other for personal relief and comfort, 
a ad for the propagation of the race, and the indissolubleness of 
t'te union thus contracted, was demonstrated by their very posi- 
t) on in the universe. They could never part. Whichever did any- 
thing that made any separation between them committed a wrong. 
That represents the normal condition of the estate of wedlock. 

When men and women multiplied, and there arose a multipli- 
cation of possibilities of violating the original law, the most that 
Moses seemed to do was to put in form certain ar- 

The true law of r , , . P ., n . , 

divorce rangements for regulating, as iar as possible, the 

irregularities which had sprung up in society. 

Hard-hearted men would put their wives away. Moses interposed 

in behalf of the woman. Jesus goes back to first principles, and 

thence deduces the law of divorce. 1. The married pair are one 

in flesh and heart and life ; and neither should do anything which 

shall weaken or soil this blessed union. 2. No man shall divorce 

his wife unless he know her to have first violated the law of 

chastity, otherwise he wrongs her and drives her to do wrong. 

3. J£ to that unlawful putting away he superadd the marrying of 

another woman, he commits adultery with that second woman.* 



* The statement in Mark, who is as 
remarkable for his attention to details 
as he is for his lack of attention to 
chronological order, is : " Whosoever 
shall put away his wife, and marry an- 
other, committeth adultery against 
her." The original Greek is en' avrqv, 



and this, I believe, refers to the second 
wife ; and the classical use of this pre- 
position with the accusative, I think, 
justifies my interpretation. Of course, 
at the same time, he is an adulterer 
quoad his former wife. 



JESTJS ON HIS LAST CIRCUIT. 521 

4:. The wcman who is separated from her husband for her own 
fault is an adulterers afresh, if she marry again. A form of mar- 
riage cannot annul the wrong of the transaction. 5. If the hus- 
band be innocent and the wife guilty, a divorce may ensue, the 
husband may marry, but the wife may not. A second marriage 
would be but a continuance of her sin. These five particulars 
seem to reside in the original law of marriage, as stated by 
Josus. 

Dr. Woolsey {Essay on Divorce, p. 59) sums up this teaching 
very clearly in the following sentence : " The general principle, 
serving as the groundwork of all these declarations, is, that legal 
divorce does not, in the view of God, and according to the correct 
rule of morals, authorize either husband or wife thus separated to 
marry again, with the single exception that when the divorce oc- 
curs on account of a sexual crime, the innocent party may, without 
guilt, contract a second marriage." 

Whether these views of Jesus were fundamentally right, we are 
not now to discuss. This is what he taught. This teaching has 
through ages controlled the opinions of the best minds, and thor- 
oughly changed domestic life from what we know it to have been 
in Greece, and Home, and Palestine, in the times of Jesus, to what 
we know it is in the best parts of America and Europe to-day. It 
is noticeable that wherever these views have prevailed there has 
been a better state of society in every other particular, and that 
departure from these principles has marked social decay, all legis- 
lation not conformed to these principles having the effect of rap- 
idly damaging the moral tone of society. No society is so good 
as that in which a divorced man, unless he be parted from his 
wife for reasons not implying immorality on his part, is held as 
an acknowledged adulterer ; and in which a divorced woman, 
unless she be parted from her husband by reason of his inconti- 
nence, is treated as an unfortunate woman. 

What Jesus said to his disciples on the objection which they 
started and the inference which they made that marriage was un- 
profitable, it must be admitted is a passage of 
difficulty. Marriage is the normal condition of + . 0b J ections *>? 
man. lliat we know. It is always honorable. 
No celibacy is equal to chastity in marriage. But there may be 
celibates. Jesus speaks of three kinds, those who are such by 
nature, by compulsion, and by choice. 1. Some have congenital 



522 FKOM FEAST OF TABEENACLE8 UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

disqualifications ; they are born with physical defects which make 
it impracticable for them to marry. 2. There are those who have 
been mutilated by men ; and this was a large class in the days of 
Jesus. In our day the servants who guard the harems in the East 
are eunuchs, and the Eoman Church, it is said, makes eunuchs 
for the benefit of sacred art, those who sing the Miserere at the 
Sistine Chapel at Rome retaining the peculiar characteristics of 
their voices at the expense of their manhood. In the class of 
forced celibates also may be reckoned those whom " society," the 
artificial rules of conventional life, exclude from such a union as 
nature demands and God sanctions. 3. Those who decline mar- 
riage for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens, a phrase by 
which Jesus always seems to set forth his work in the world, be- 
cause he believed that his work was founded on the principles 
which maintain the harmonies of the universe, and that his work 
promulgated and expanded those principles. For the sake of 
promoting this great work, if he can remain chaste, in some ex- 
ceptional circumstances, a man may remain in celibacy. Other- 
wise marriage is better. No man dare be a celibate for his own 
ease and convenience. The rule is that it is better to marry. It 
must be a mournful exception which justifies a man to abstain. 
Such an exception occurred, perhaps, in the case of Paul. Such 
a celibate was Jesus. 

But, of course, in this case Jesus spoke figuratively. History 
gives us a horrible instance of these words having been taken lit- 
erally. Origen, in the mistaken excess of his ardent youthful 
zeal for the cause of Jesus, so mutilated himself that he was dis- 
qualified for marriage. This act was properly condemned by the 
ancient church, and for it he was excommunicated from the 
church of Alexandria.* 

The liberal rule of Jesus comes out at the close of the inter- 
view. You are not to adopt celibacy as a rule. You are not to 
teach it as a doctrine. You are not to enforce it on others. 
u Let him receive it who is able to receive it." But let him be 
sure he is able. You cannot be sure in respect of another, there- 
fore you must not lay so grievous and unnatural a burden on 
another. 

* On the whole subject of marriage i compare SchafE's History of the Apo&~ 
and celibacy in the New Testament, | tolic Church, § 112, pp. 448-454. 



CHAPTEK V. 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 



It was about this time that the blessing of little children must 
have taken place. As the Passover approached the people knew 
that the time of his departure for Jerusalem was Jesug blesges lit . 
drawing near. It reveals to us much of the char- tie children, 
acter and behavior of Jesus during this trying Matt, xix., xx. ; 
and depressing period of his life, to learn that Mark x > Luke 
the mothers of the country were so impressed 
with his sanctity and benignity that they brought their young chil- 
dren, even their babes, to him, that he might merely put his hands 
upon them and pray over them. But the disciples were becoming 
rigorists. It is painful to see how rapidly men — who at first take 
advanced ground, become pioneers in mural progress, and make 
themselves the differentia of their age — do begin to lapse into 
blindest conservatism so soon as they consolidate their organiza- 
tion ; do begin to have certain ideas of dignity ; do suppose that 
they are improving their state and position by as great a remove 
as possible from naturalness. In this case the disciples probably 
felt a fresh accession of dignity, as their Master was manifestly 
about to make a public display of himself, and their hopes of a 
Messianic inauguration probably began to be augmented. 

The disciples offered to forbid these mothers as obtrusive. It 
was below the dignity of their Master. They had nothing to say 
when the Pharisees were holding him to the discussion of such 
profound and important questions as the divorce law. They felt 
that that was employment worthy his noble character and mission ; 
but that he should be asked to waste his time on babes seemed to 
them past endurance. So they rebuked these revering mothers. 

But Jesus, in turn, rebuked the disciples. He had other views 
and another temper. He was much displeased at the conduct of 
his friends. It was cutting him off from that portion of the com- 
munity least offensive to his simple and pure nature. It showed 



524 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

upon their part such stubborn adherence to their prejudices in 
favor of a sensuous, civil, political Messiahship, such wrong views 
of the kingdom of the heavens, as though its insignia should be 
the trappings of worldly pomp, that Jesus was much displeased, 
and said to them, " Suffer the little children to come to me, and 
forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of the heavens. I 
most assuredly say to you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom 
of God as a little child, he shall not enter into it." And, having 
taken them in his arms, he blessed them, placing his hands upon 
them. 

The whole picture is simple, natural, beautiful, and sublime. 
The discourse on marriage crimes stands as a dark background 

to this brilliant tableau of a great Teacher lifting 
A beautiful scene. . ,, , . , , . . ,, . ° 

up infants into his arms, coming near the foun- 
tains of humanity, airing his soul in the free atmosphere of unso- 
phisticated childhood. It was an occasion seized to make a lesson 
for his disciples. They were thinking of a throne, a court, them- 
selves as Hebrew princes in the regenerated theocracy, and that 
princes and their king should not be interrupted in their converse 
by the prattle of babes. Jesus taught them that he knew noth- 
ing of any such kingdom ; that the kingdom of the heavens, which 
he preached, and which was also the kingdom of God, was made 
up of such people, not of children merely, not that the kingdom 
was theirs exclusively, but that no one could enter and enjoy that 
kingdom, which is as wide as all the heavens, covering the uni- 
verse, who did not have childlikeness of disposition ; that so far 
from children having to grow into manhood in order to enter the 
fruition of God's kingdom it was absolutely essential that men 
should shed the hard-shell of their rigid manhood and come back 
to the unsuspicious, open-eyed, natural sensitiveness of childhood ; 
and thus have the utmost enjoyment of all that God has made. 

About this time, as he was on his journey out of the country, 
a certain ruler came running and kneeled to him, and said, " Good 

Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may 
The neh ruler. j mier ^ perpetual life ? " He seems suddenly to 
• Luk ' " have felt the necessity of receiving the instruction 

of Jesus before he left the neighborhood. Jesus 
replied, " Why do you call me good ? No one is good but one, 
that is God. You know the commandments : Do not kill ; do not 
commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness ; defraud 







"Whosoever shall not receive the tang do m. of lh)d 
8.S a little child, he shall not enter into it " 



I — 



**.* + + + + + + + ^^^^^^.ftfl.f^ 




f rougjt unto j)im also torn 



seBgc &j£mmm%&: 




— 



sail unta fm 



Mmmx 



Slrall not 



itotnp 



£jp Hiogitmn nf (!M 

Is a » Cp, 



i)C Mall ui 



Mollis 



inter Cjtfm 



- 



%t ®0oh fpm it|} in lis Jrms, 
on tljem, anit IkssfHImiu 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 525 

not ; honor your father and your mother, and you shall love your 
neighbor as yourself." He answered, " Teacher, all these things 
have I observed from my youth up." Jesus looked on him and 
loved him, and then spoke the words that tested him, " One thing 
is yet wanting to you : if you will be perfect, go sell whatever 
you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in 
heaven ; and come, follow me." lie was very rich, and the saying 
sent him away very sorrowful. 

This is a peculiarly interesting case, as exhibiting a phase of 
human nature worth studying, and as giving fresh insight into the 
character of Jesus. This person, who seems to have been a ruler 
of the synagogue, had led a life of scrupulous external morality, 
but failed to have quiet of spirit and satisfaction of soul. He 
had probably watched the course and studied the character of 
Jesus. He had occasional deep longings and high aspirations, but 
he did not have most thorough earnestness in the pursuit of the 
highest good, — nay, had a kind of self-conceit and nippantness in 
talking of the most sacred things, both which came out in his ad 
dress to Jesus, " Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit perpet 
ual life ? " To which Jesus's reply seems to be a check ; as if he 
had said : You seem to talk of goodness very lightly. Goodness 
is the loftiest thing. No one is absolutely good but God. Do you 
recognize God's goodness in me, or do you address me with an 
empty compliment? "As he would not have himself called Mes- 
siah in the wrong, or at least easily misinterpreted, sense in which 
the word was then often used, so neither [would he have himself 
in a mistaken way called] Good Master." (Lange.) He gives the 
young man, however, no space for reply, but proceeds to answer 
the question by directing him to the commandments of the Moral 
Law. . The young man avowed that he had strictly kept all the 
commandments all his life. This he may have said with an accent 
of pride, but there was a painful tone in the question, " What yet 
do I lack?" which moved the compassion of Jesus. The young 
man may have unduly plumed himself upon his legal righteous- 
ness, but he was certainly candid. 

It was in kindness, then, not in severity, that Jesus, whose spir- 
itual insight into men even his enemies must acknowledge, showed 
the young man the depth of his own heart and his lack of total 
earnestness. He was rich. Jesus submitted him to a violent test, 
namely, the selling of all his property, its distribution to the poor 



626 PROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEE£. 



and his following a Teacher who had no worldly gain or glory to 
offer. Jesus did not here enact a law for all his followers. He 
never enacted laws. He simply taught the great fundamental 
principles of morality, from which each man must make a rule 
for himself. He saw that the temperament of the young man 
made it quite easy for him to render his life exemplary of all out- 
ward morality, while a latent spirit of self-indulgence weakened 
his whole character. The sorrow the young man felt demon- 
strated the correctness of the estimate Jesus had formed of him. 
When he found just what he lacked he was not willing to pay 
the price of perfection. Being troubled at that saying he went 
away grieved, for he had great possessions. 

Jesus made a lesson for his disciples. He turned to them and 
said, "With what difficulty shall they that have riches enter into 

the kingdom of God." This saying astonished 
10 y ° e his disciples, and Jesus saw the impression which 

his words had made. They recollected that riches 
were a part of the blessings pronounced under the old dispensa- 
tion, and their Jewish ideas exaggerated the temporal prosperity 
which ought to visit the children of the kingdom under the new, 
the Messianic, dispensation, which they were fondly hoping was 
about to be inaugurated. Jesus said, " Children, how difficult it 
is to enter the kingdom of God.* It is easier for a camel to enter 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the 
kingdom of God." Here he speaks of the natural difficulty all 
men encounter in coming out of a gross worldly life into a spir- 
itual and lofty mode of existence, a difficulty intensified in the 
case of the rich, because their hearts grow large and their bur 
dens are packed bulkily upon them, so that, to use a proverbial 
expression, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle than for such a person to divest himself of his love for 
these material possessions, to cease to be gross and sensuous so as 
to become fine and spiritual, to enjoy a kingdom whose greatnesses 
and glories and happinesses are wholly spiritual. 

At this saying the disciples were astonished out of measure 
and said, "Who then can be saved? " If it be this temper which 



* In the common version (Mark x. 24; 
the reading- is, "Children, how hard it 
is [for them that trust in riches] to enter 
into the kingdom of God." The words 



included in brackets do not occur in the 
original in the oldest MSS. The trans- 
lation I have made in the text is of tha 
Sinait. Cod. in loco. 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 527 

destroys a man the rich will be lost ; and all men, poor as well aa 

rich, will be found to be engrossed with the world and filled with 

worldliness. Matthew and Mark say that Jesus, " looking on them," 

made his reply. How often the looking of Jesus 

? \ , , t . , . -r . Who can be 

is mentioned by these historians ! It seems that gaved ? 

they would supplement the words they repeat by 

intimating that there was something in the eyes and looks of Jesus 

which was illustrative and explanatory of the sentences he uttered. 

And most probably there was. If that could be reproduced with 

his words what light it would probably shed upon all his most 

profound sayings. The reply was, " With men it is impossible, but 

not with God ; for with God all things are possible ; " which 

seems to teach that no man has power of nimself to spiritualize 

his nature, but that God is able to do that for any man. 

The impulsive Peter was hereby excited to propound this ques- 
tion : " Lo ! we have left all and followed you : what therefore 
shall be to us ? " It is a little difficult to understand the temper 
in which this question was asked. Peter compared, and perhaps 
contrasted himself — for the personal " I " is concealed under the 
modest " we " — with the rich young man who had been con- 
founded by the test which Jesus applied to his character. How 
far Peter's renunciation of the comforts of home was proof of his 
devotion to the spiritual life he may have been at a loss to de- 
termine. Or, if giving up worldly wealth was all, then, in view 
of their sacrifices, what might they not expect ? For the apostles 
were not totally impecunious. Peter had his house, John and 
James had servants, Matthew had a lucrative office and was able 
to give a feast to his friends. And even if they had been mere 
fishers, with a hut by the lake and a net on the shore, a poor man's 
heart often clings more tenaciously to his little than a rich uan's 
heart to his much. 

Jesus answered, " I most assuredly say to you, that you who have 
followed me in the Palingenesia, when the Son of Man shall sit 
on his glorious throne, you shall also sit upon twelve thrones 
judging the twelve tribes of Israel: and every one who has for- 
saken brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, 
or lands, on account of my name and the gospel's, shall receive a 
hundredfold now in this time, and in the age to come life per- 
petual." 

The " Palingenesia " is translated " the regeneration " in the 



528 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

common version. It means " the renovation," " the renewed ex- 

istence." It shows what Jesus believed would be his influence 

^ w ,. upon the world, that his life would infuse such 

The Palingene- „ 1 r • -, i 

gia powerful transforming elements into humanity 

that the world should be renewed, as since his time 
it manifestly has been. He began a new seon, a fresh age. It is 
also to be noticed that incidentally Jesus gives his authority to 
monogamy as he had on the divorce question very clearly rendered 
it. He does not say " wives, v as he says " children," but " wife," 
as he says " mother." He promises them a manifold return for 
all their sacrifices. His saying about the twelve apostles on the 
twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes is enigmatical. Unless 
he furnished a private explanation it must have puzzled them to 
the close of their lives. If he did give such private interpreta- 
tion they have failed to record it, and nothing has occurred in the 
history of the world, so far as I can see, to fulfil the prediction 
of these words. It is quite easy to give a mystical interpretation, 
but the plain apostles would not have understood that. The only 
reasonable ground that I see is to say that this is an unfulfilled 
prophecy. There is a general truth, well-known to the students 
of human society, that he who makes the most sacrifices for his 
race has the greatest moral influence over them, and this abstract 
truth is embedded in the concrete forms of speech which Jesus 
here employs. There is also this truth, that they who have, in all 
ages since his death, devoted themselves to Jesus, and received all 
his words into loving breasts, have gained in spiritual influence 
and enjoyment much more than they have lost of power and 
pleasure in surrendering their visible material properties for 
their religious principles. 

Immediately Jesus added, as if to check Peter's presumption, 
the saying, " But many first shall be last, and last first." There is 
nothing mercenary in the kingdom of the heavens. No man need 
fancy that he can do what will entitle him to promotion. It was 
a bad footing on which Peter set his question, "What shall we 
have f what shall be to us f " It was the question of the hireling's 
heart. 

In illustration of his saying Jesus furnished the following 
parable : 

" The kingdom of the heavens is like unto a man, a householder [a human 
householder], who went out with the dawn to hire laborers into his vineyard : 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 520 

and having agreed with the laborers for a denarius [15 cents*] the day, he 
sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour [nine 
o'clock a.m.] he saw others standing idle in the market-place, and said to them, 
'Go you also into my vineyard, and whatsoever may be just 

T .,, , . t ,, . -. . . Parable of the la- 

I will give to you.' And they went. And again going out 
about the sixth and ninth hour [noon and three o'clock 
p.m.] he did in like manner. And about the eleventh hour [near the close of 
day] he found others standing, and saith to them, ' Why stand you here all 
the day idle ? ' They say to him, ' Because no man has hired us.' He says to 
them, ' Go you also into the vineyard.' Now when the evening was come the 
lord of the vineyard says to his overseer, ' Call the laborers and pay the hire, 
beginning from the last unto the first.' And they who came about the eleventh 
hour received each a denarius. And the first having come, supposed that they 
should receive more ; but they received each a denarius. But having received 
it, they murmured against the householder, saying, ' These last have made but 
one hour, and thou makest them equal to us, who have borne the burden of 
the day and the scorching heat.' But he answering, said to one of tnem, 
* Friend, I do you no wrong. Did you not engage with me for a penny ? 
Take what is yours and begone. But I will give to this last even as to you. 
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own ? Is your eye evil 
because I am good? ' Thus the last shall be first, and the first last." 

Here is the picture of a scene which to this day can be witnessed 

in Oriental lands. Laborers take their spades and assemble in the 

market-place. Employers go and bargain with 

1 . i li. j mi , An Oriental 

as many and such as they need. Ihere may be 

both laborers and hirers who come late. These 

will meet. In this parable the owner of the vineyard went several 

times in one day. Each time he hired as many as were present. 

Those whom he found at noon were not present at sunrise, and 

those whom he found an hour before sunset had not arrived at 

noon. When there was a whole day's work the householder made 

a bargain with the laborers ; when there was but one hour of work 

he promised what was fair, and they trusted him. The trouble 

was in the settlement. He gave what he chose out of his own 

means to the last comers. He chose to give for an hour's labor 

what was usually considered at that time fair pay for a whole 

day's work. This did not in any way interfere with the rights 

of the others. When their time for settlement came they seemed 

to think that if a denarius was right pay for one hour, at least 

several denarii would come to those who had been working twelve 

hours. But the reasoning was unsound. The laborers of an hour 

* See the representation of a denarius on p. 464. 

34 



530 FEOM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

received their denarius in part as pay and in part as gratuity. In 

fact there was no bargain with them • there was with those firsl 

who had labored longest. 

The lessons seem quite plain, if we have no system of theology 

to bolster. 1. The kingdom of heaven is one of moral govern- 

m , , ment, in which there is proprietorship upon one 

The lesson. ' , . \ * o aii i 

side and work on the other. 2. All who are 

willing may find work to do in this kingdom. All are called. 

3. There will certainly be pay and rewards to all who work. 

4. Both the rewards and the pay will be distributed on grounds 
of perfect justice and discriminating mercy. No one will be 
injured by what is given to another. Whatever imperfections of 
work or frailty of temper may be in any laborer, he will receive 
the full amount of any payment stipulated in the covenant. There 
will be justice to all, and grace to such as can appreciate it. The 
first laborers were manifestly mercenary, and worked for the 
money, and evidently with such a temper as they exhibited they 
could not have done their work well. There must have been 
something in the last laborers which so won the approval of their 
employer that he was willing to pay them as though they had 
done a whole day's work. He called up first those who had come 
in last. He paid them liberally as liberal workers. He then 
called up those whom he had engaged first. He paid them justly 
according to covenant. He showed them his approval of the others, 
and perhaps for that purpose had paid them first. And thus the 
first, because of their technical spirit, became last; and the last, 
who trusted their employer, and wrought heartily without a bar- 
gain, became first. The kingdom of God is such that they gain 
most who trust God most ; but every man is fully paid for all 
service ; and they who trust God most boast themselves least, and 
mat e no merit of their works. 

Pursuing their way to Jerusalem, Jesus took occasion for the 

third time to forewarn his disciples of his approaching death. 

Nothing seemed to take him at unawares. He 

A third warning. wit ] ldrew his twelve chosen friends from the 

x. • Luke xviii crowd and communed with them confidentially, 

saying to them, according to Mark's record : 

41 Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem : and the Son of Man 

shall be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes : and they shall 

condemn him to death ; and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 531 

mock and to scourge and to crucify ; and the third day he shall 
be raised." 

It is a remarkable illustration of the force of preconceived 
opinions that the disciples of Jesus, being filled with expectations 
of an early display of Messianic glory, could not comprehend 
words so explicit as these. They were mystic utterances which 
they filled with the light of their own hopes. It was the third 
announcement, made by him to his disciples, of his impending 
fate. The words contain no ambiguity. The Jewish ecclesiastical 
power was to seize him, and to deliver him to the Roman civil 
authorities. He was to be mocked, and scourged, and crucified. 
Could more unambiguous words have been used ? And yet they 
could not understand them. How much less could they under- 
stand, " and the third day he shall be raised ? " Perhaps it was 
this that helped to make the whole statement unintelligible. 
There was to be a " raising," an elevation, and he is the Messiah. 
" There is something awful to come between this hour and that 
elevation, something he calls scourging and crucifying : but how 
can we know what he means ? " Perhaps that is what they said. 

A singularly interesting illustration of their state of mind is 
furnished by an incident which now took place. Jesus had left 
Ephrem to join the crowds going to Jerusalem. 
The church had put a price ononis head. He 1 Going to Jeru ' 

. . salem. 

was going to deliver himself to the ecclesiastical 

authorities. He evidently intended to do this in a dignified man- 
ner. And before going to Jerusalem he prepared to yield him- 
self to the Messianic hopes and desires of the people. He would 
see what they would do with him as Messiah. He could not have 
taken this course in the early portion of his career, for then there 
would have broken forth a prodigious popular uprising which the 
Eoman power would have suppressed, and in the collision Jesus 
would have been crushed. This would have occurred before he 
had planted his principles in any body of men who should have 
been committed to their propagation. The circumstances were 
altered. If he were sacrificed his work would live : and he felt 
sure that he should even now be sacrificed. This he told his twelve 
chief followers, among whom were his cousins James and John. 

Somehow the mother of the two sons of Zebedee, Salome, 
aunt of Jesus, joined the cavalcade going towards Jericho. The 
sons probably had an interview with their mother, who was a 



532 FltOM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

woman of the heroic mould. They themselves were fiery, impet 
uous, ambitious men. The question of precedence had been 
mooted among the disciples. The great Teacher, in whom as the 
Messiah they all had growing faith, had predicted some awful 
trouble which he was to encounter. Now was the time for James 
and John to secure a pledge of the highest posts of honor when 
he should come into his glory. Salome was his aunt. She had 
been known and loved by Jesus from his infancy. She had lately 
contributed of her substance and time to his comfort. Her two 
sons were his cousins. They had been his steadfast adherents, 
and almost constant companions. They were men of ability and 
great force of character. He himself had called them Boanerges, 
Sons of Thunder. Now, in his hour of depression, if they and 
their mother should unite in a petition which showed their willing- 
ness to encounter with him the powers of darkness, would he not 
he moved to pledge them the highest places in his kingdom ? 

Could anything more clearly than this disclose the sensuous, 
Messianic ideas of the warmest friends of Jesus ? 

They came, Salome and James and John. The mother paid 
homage to Jesus in a manner which showed that she had a peti- 
tion to prefer. " What do you wish ? " asked 

,. . , Jesus. Her reply was : " Say that these my two 

disciples. l J J J 

sons may sit, one on your right hand, and one on 
your left, in your kingdom." The request was painful to Jesus. 
He foresaw that he was to be crucified. The unconscious request 
of this mother was that her two sons might be crucified, one 
on his right and the other on his left, as it fell to two thieves 
subsequently. Jesus answered : " You know not what you ask. 
Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, or to be 
baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized ? " The 
bold answer of the confident brothers is : " We are able." Jesus 
knew that they must suffer for his sake, and so he tenderly added : 
" You shall indeed drink of my cup, and be baptized with the 
baptism that I am baptized with ; but to sit on my right hand 
and on my left is not mine to give, but for whom it has been 
prepared by my Father." 

When the ten heard of the effort which James and John had 
made to secure glorious posts in the kingdom they were very an- 
gry. Matthew truthfully and candidly admits his own fault in 
the premises, while recording that of his brethren. The fact ia 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 533 

that they all desired the primacy in the kingdom which they 
vainly fancied was about to be set up in the world. Jesus cor- 
rected their views and their temper at the same moment, while 
he pacified them toward the two brothers, by calling the whole 
company of twelve to him and saying : " You know that the 
rulers of the nations rule imperiously over them, and the great 
men oppress them. It shall not be so among you : but whosoever 
may wish to be great among you, let him be your waiting-man 
[servant] ; and whosoever may wish to be chief among you shall 
be slave of all. As the Son of Man came not to be served, but 
to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." This extin- 
guishes all churchly pride and nips the bud of any hierarchy 
among them. It is the enunciation of a general principle, wide 
as the kingdom of the heavens. In the little earthly kingdoms 
and churches men get their power by tradition or prescription, 
and the temptation is to be overbearing and oppressive. But a 
man comes to be important as he is useful. He rules most men 
who makes himself necessary to most men. That is a fact which 
no delegated or usurped authority can suppress forever, how 
much soever it may seem to do so for a season. Call him slave 
or beggar, if the man have rendered himself essential to the 
happiness of the largest number of the people, he is their king. 
Jesus rests his own claim to greatness in that he makes the 
heaviest possible sacrifice for the greatest possible good of the 
largest possible number. 

The cavalcade of pilgrims to the Holy City having crossed the 
Jordan approached Jericho. In this vicinity occurred the giving 
of sight to two blind men. The narrative of this 
cure is related by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, J" eri <*o. Mat- 

t , • -i , t . thew xx. ; Mark 

whose stories so curiously cross one another as to T , ' ... 

x.; Lukexviu. 

create great perplexity. Matthew says there were 
two blind men, Mark and Luke say one, the former giving the 
afflicted man's name as Bartimseus, meaning Son of Timasus. 
Luke represents the cure to have been made as Jesus was enter- 
ing, and Matthew and Mark as he was leaving Jericho. 

That the reader may see the several solutions of these dis- 
crepancies, I copy the excellent classification of 
them made by Andrews, inserting in brackets e m men * 

the names of several authors who have held 
each particular view. 



534 FK0M FEAST OF TABERNACLES TJIHTL THE LAST WEEK. 

"1. That three blind men were healed; one mentioned by Luke, as lit 
approached the city ; two mentioned by Matthew (Mark speaks only of one), 
as he was leaving the city. [Kitto, Augustine, Morrison.] Some [Osiander] 
make four to have been healed. — 2. That the cases of healing were two, and 
distinct; one being on his entry into the city, the other on his departure. 
[Lightfoot, Ebrard, Krafft, Tischendorf, Wiesler, Greswell, Bucher, Lex, 
Neander.] According to this solution, Matthew combines the two in one, and 
deeming the exact time and place unimportant, represents them as both occur- 
ring at the departure of Jesus from the city. — 3. That two were healed, and 
both at his entry ; but one being better known than the other, he only is men- 
tioned by Mark and Luke. [Doddridge, Newcome, Lichenstein, Friedlieb.] 
— 4. That one of the blind men sought to be healed as Jesus approached the 
city, but was not; that the next morning, joining himself to another, they 
waited for him by the gate, as he was leaving the city, and were both healed 
together, Luke, in order to preserve the unity of his narrative, relates the 
healing of the former, as if it had taken place on the afternoon of the entry. 
[Bengel, Stier, Trench, Ellicott. See modifications of this view in McKnight 
and Crosby, and another in Lange on Matt. xx. 30.] — 5. That only one was 
healed, and he when Jesus left the city. Matthew, according to his custom, 
uses the plural where the other Evangelists use the singular. [Oosterzee on 
Luke ; Da Costa.] — 6. That Luke's variance with Matthew and Mark, in regard 
to place, may be removed by interpreting (xviii. 35) ' as He was come nigh to 
Jericho,' ev rep eyy^eiv avrov et? 'Ifpt^co, in the general sense of being near to 
Jericho, but without defining whether he was approaching to it or departing 
from it. Its meaning here is determined by Matthew and Mark: he was 
leaving the city, but still near to it. Luke, like Mark, mentions only the 
more prominent person healed. [Grotius on Matt. xx. 30; Clericus, Diss., ii., 
Canon 6 ; Pilkington, cited in Townsend v. 33 ; Robinson, Jarvis, Owen.] " 
Newcome (liar. , 275) holds that Jesus spent several days in Jericho, and that 
his departure, mentioned by Matthew and Mark, was for a temporary purpose, 
the blind man being healed as he was returning. McKnight's theory is (Har., 
ii. 93) that there were two Jerichos ; that as he left one he cured one blind 
man, and as he left the other he cured the second blind man. Paulus (iii. 
44) holds that the procession was so great that the front ranks were leaving 
the city as that portion in which Jesus was was entering it." 

The reader has before him the original record and the various 
theories, and must choose what seems most satisfactory to him. I 
believe that two were healed, but that one, for some reason, was 
more conspicuous than the other, or afterward came to be well 
known to the apostles, and therefore the account of his cure alone 
is preserved by Mark and Luke. His story is simply this. 

He was sitting by the road-side, plying his business as a beggar, 
when he heard that in the vast procession of pilgrims, which was 
sweeping past him with its bustling noise, was the famous Teacher 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 535 

and Healer, Jesus of Nazareth. He began at once to cry out, 
" Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me ! " It will now be per- 
ceived how at every step the Messianic spirit rises n .. _.._ ... 

1/1 r Blind Bartimaeus. 

among the people. We should naturally expect 
this when we recollect that the church had set a price upon the 
head of Jesus, and yet he was publicly, deliberately, and with 
dignity, going up to the head-quarters of his enemies after he had 
performed such miracles as made his friends feel that no enemies 
could crush him. 

When Bartimaeus made his cry, which was an acknowledgment 
of the Messianic dignity of Jesus, those nearest bade him keep his 
peace and make no disturbance. This injunction was not made, 
as so many seem to think, to repress his acknowledgment of Jesus 
as the Messiah. The populace had not yet turned against Jesus. 
They rather sided with him as against the ecclesiastical party * 
but as there seemed to be in the confluence of events a current of 
festivity, they did not choose to have the lofty gayeties of the 
occasion depressed by the unmannerly cries of a beggar. But 
they could not repress Bartimaeus. The more they tried to silence 
him, the more he cried, " Son of David, have mercy on me." His 
voice reached the ear of Jesus, who stood still and said, "Call 
him." There is a touch of naturalness in the narrative. As soon 
as Jesus spoke complacently, those very men became very kmd to 
the beggar they had just now rebuked, and said, " Be of good 
courage ; rise ; he calls you." How success begets success ! This 
little history is constantly reproduced in society. Men of such 
force of character as disturb the public are suppressed if possible. 
If they be persistent enough to begin to succeed, that same public 
takes great delight in assisting. 

As soon as Bartimaeus knew that Jesus called him, he arose, 
flung aside his loose and probably ragged garment, and leaping 
up came to Jesus. Jesus said to him, " What will 
you that I should do to you ? " He answered, 
a Babboni [My Master] that I might receive my sight ! " The 
contrast between the ambitious and foolish prayer of James and 
John and the humble and wise prayer of this beggar is striking. 
He knew his greatest necessity. He was humble, he was believ- 
ing, he asked the most needful thing. Jesus neither questioned 
nor criticized him, but simply said, " Go your way : your faith 
has healed you." It was a mere breath, a few words, and with- 



536 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

out touch, the sight came instantly back to Bartimseus. It was 

enough. He left all and joined the procession going into Jericho. 

This permitting himself to be publicly hailed as the Messiah 

being followed with a striking and sudden miracle 

openly performed before an immense multitude, 

excited the people to a great pitch, and they 

shouted praises to God on their way into Jericho. 

The city of Jericho, the site of which is now occupied by a 
miserable village of huts, was a place of considerable historical 



Jericho. Luke 
xix. ; Matt. xxv. 




and commercial importance. It was immediately opposite the 
spot in the Jordan which was crossed by the Israelites when they 
to;k possession of the promised land. Here they found much 
spoL. It was situated in a beautiful plain. Its name, which sig- 
nifies " Fragrance," indicates that it Avas in the midst of a growth 
of finest plants. In fact, there bloomed the palm-tree and the 
balsam " in the midst of a luxuriant and fragrant 'vegetable king- 
dom." It afterwards became the favorite residence of priests, 
who loved its shades for contemplation, and of Roman officers, 
whose presence was required by the richness of the neighborhood, 
and by its being on the road of travel and of trade from the East. 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 



537 



Zacchaeus. 



Pilgrims from the Perea side of the Jordan came through Jericho 
on their way to Jerusalem. 

Among the residents of Jericho, at the time of the visit of Jesus, 
was Zacchaeus. He was a Jew. His Hebrew name, notwith- 
standing its Greek termination, shows that.* He 
was an officer of the Roman Empire, whether an 
actual farmer of the revenue, a publicanus, or only a comptroller, 
who received what was collected by the portitores and then paid 
it over to the farmer-general, we cannot tell. The Roman law 
provided that such farmer-general should be a Roman knight, but 
Josephus says that sometimes Jews obtained the office, as was 
therefore possible in the case of Zacchaeus. At any rate he had 
a lucrative place in the customs, and Jericho was an important 
post by the general reason of its situation, and the particular rea- 
son of there being then a heavy tax on dates and balsam. 

This man desired to see Jesus. It is remarkable that as Jesus 
had achieved what his countrymen regarded as the bad reputation 
of being the " Friend of Publicans," Zacchaeus, one of the very 
chief, had never beheld his person, although he had repeatedly 
been in the neighborhood of Jericho. Moved by curiosity, and 
perhaps by still higher motives, as the subsequent history would 
justify us in supposing, he determined to put himself in a position 
to see the distinguished traveller as he passed. Zacchaeus was so 
short that he could not see because of the great crowd. His desire 
to behold Jesus conquered his sense of dignity. So he ranahead 
of the crowd and climbed up into a sycamore-tree. It is to be 
remembered that this is not like the tall, close, slender tree of our 
American river-bottoms. In Palestine it is a great tree, with 
large trunk and far-spreading arms, and planted near roads and 
in the open places where several paths meet. The arms grow 
across the road, giving excellent opportunity for seeing any one 
passing beneath. Hammocks are sometimes swung in them, and 
a score of girls and boys may be seen playing among the limbs 
of this ample tree.f 

As Jesus passed and looked up he saw Zacchaeus, and somehow 
knew his name, and surprised him with the sudden address, u Zac- 
chaeus, make haste and come down ; for to-day I must stay at your 



* The name is found in its Hebrew 
form in Ezra ii. 9 ; Nehemiah vii. 14 ; 
and 2 Mace, x 19. 



f For a. description and a picture of 
this tree, see Thomson's Land and Book, 
ii. 22. 



538 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

house." The freedom, the kindness, the cordiality of Jesus won 
Zacchseus instantaneously. He almost fell from the tree, and 
with demonstrations of joy received Jesus as his guest. 

On the way to the house there were some disaffected Jews who 
criticised this conduct. Uninvited, he had invited himself to be- 
come the truest of a sinner. Everv man connected 

His conversion. . , , ., „ 

with the collection or. the revenues was hateful 
in the eyes of the Jews, and if one of their own nation accepted 
such a post he was regarded as specially despicable. It was said 
by some one in the crowd, " He has gone to be guest with a man 
that is a sinner." Zacchseus heard it, and knew that he was a 
sinner, and confessed. He stood in face of the crowd and said 
to Jesus, " See, Lord, the half of my possessions I give to the 
poor ; and if I have taken anything from any man by extortion I 
will restore him fourfold." There was something most honest, 
deliberate, and ready in this outspoken confession. According 
to the law (Numbers v. 6) a man who had wronged another and 
confessed it, was to restore the stolen property and add twenty 
per cent, of its value. This man knew that he had wronged 
others, but his quick calculation told him that he could give half 
his property to the poor, restore all his ill-gotten gains, and pay 
the injured party three hundred per cent., and yet have all he 
now cared to retain, since he had now the transcendent honor of 
entertaining Jesus as a guest in his house. Speaking both to 
Zacchseus and of him, Jesus said, " This day has salvation come 
to this house, inasmuch as he also is a Son of Abraham. For the 
Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost." It was 
a most noble and free act on the part of Jesus. He rose above 
caste and prejudice and political partisanship. His quick eye saw 
the good in Zacchseus, a germ of sweet richness kept from its 
growth by the difficulties of his position and the prejudice of his 
people. Jesus suddenly so warmed it that it sprung at once into 
vigorous growth. Wide-hearted Jesus ! 

We know nothing more of Zacchseus positively. There is a 
tradition that he became a disciple of Peter, and subsequently 
Bishop of Csesarea. But there is no historical proof of this, s5 
far as I am aware. 

It may have been in the house of Zacchaeus, or just as they 
started, or soon after, that Jesus uttered the Parable of the Pounds, 
in order to correct the perversely wrong views of his friends in 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 539 

the multitude, who, seeing they were approaching the Holy City, 
looked now for the immediate inauguration of his Messianic 
reign. This expectation of worldly display may have been kindled 
by the phrase, " The Son of Man is come to seek and save that 
which was lost." They believed a conflict would come between 
Jesus and the Church, and that Jesus would triumph and would 
set up " the kingdom of God " at once. This is the parable : 

" A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a king- 
dom, and return. And having called ten of his own slaves, he gave them ten 
mime, and said, ' Trade till I come.' But his citizens hated 
him, and sent a message after him, saying, ' We will not Parable of the Pounds - 
have this man to reign over us.' And it was so on his return, having received 
the kingdom, that he commanded those slaves to whom he had given th'e 
money to be called to Mm, that he might know what they had gained by 
trading. Then came the first and said, 'Lord, your mina has gained ten 
minae. 1 And he said to him, ' Well ! good slave ! because you have been faith- 
ful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.' And the second came aijd 
said, ' Lord, your mina has gained five mina?.' And he said to this man, ' Be 
you also over five cities. ' And the other came and said, ' Lord, behold your 
mina, which I have kept laid up in a napkin ; for I feared you, because you 
are an austere man. You take up what you did not lay down, and reap what 
you did not sow.' He said to him, 'Out of your own mouth will I condemn 
you, wicked slave. You knew that I am an austere man, taking up what I 
laid not down, and reaping what I did not sow. Wherefore then did you 
not give my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required 
it with interest ? ' And he said to those who stood by, ' Take from him the 
mina, and give to him that has ten minse.' And they said to him, ' Lord, he 
has ten minse.' ' I say that to every one who hath shall be given, and from 
him who hath not, even what he has shall be taken away. But mine enemies, 
those who would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay 
them before me.' " 

This parable is very far from being identical with that of the 
talents, as we shall see when we come to study the latter. That a 
writer professing to discharge the functions of criticism should 
see in this an awkward amalgamation of two other parables 1 , 
namely, of the Talents and of the Unfaithful Husbandmen, is a 
conspicuous display of the power of a preconceived theory over 
critical acumen. (Strauss's Life of Jesus, i. 351.) The parables 
have a few things in common, but the points of instruction are 
totally different. Here Jesus is surrounded by two classes of per- 
sons, one a multitude representing the Jewish people, and the 
other his little band of disciples. This parable of the pounds is 



540 FROM FEAST OF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

intended to teach a lesson to both, as both were more or less look- 
ing for the setting up of a kingdom which should overthrow 
Borne. 

The formal portion of the parable is taken from the then well- 
known circumstances in the career of Archelaus, the son of Herod 
the Great. (See the note, page 59.) Jesus dis- 
f Ar h 1 tinguishes between the servants of the king and 
the rebellious subjects of the kingdom, and has a 
lesson for each. The latter will reject their king. The Jews will 
reject Jesus for their spiritual as they had rejected Archelaus for 
their civil sovereign. The result will be their destruction and the 
establishment of Jesus in his kingdom. He meant to tell them 
that so far from the setting up of a kingdom of temporal power, 
he was to be rejected by them ; but that this rejection would not 
harm him, but would destroy the Jewish nation, which very soon 
subsequently proved to be true in history. 

He intimated, also, that his was to be a reign of spiritual in- 
fluence, and therefore, instead of putting arms into the hands of 
his servants he gave them small properties, which 

Adapted to the ^ were to u calmly working, negotiating, 
condition of the , J ' J , f & *?' 

disciples an( * trac hng until the Lord should come, buck 

conduct on their part would be the best possible 
protest against the rebellious subjects, because it would show that 
these servants had such perfect faith in the return of their master 
and king that they quietly persisted in trade, so as to have ac- 
complished all that was possible before his return. He taught 
his disciples that they who had the faith, the industry, and the 
endurance to do this should receive a reward proportionate to 
their success, but out of all proportion to the small sum put in 
their hands to trade with. If we understand even the Attic 
mina as the money here designated, the sum did not exceed $15 
gold, equal in its purchasing capabilities in that age to many times 
$15 this day, but still being only one-sixtieth of a talent. He 
tihat made it tenfold was created ruler over ten cities, and he that 
made it fivefold, over five cities. As Yon Gerlach well says, 
" Ten minse would scarcely purchase a home ; and the superabun- 
dant recompense of grace is ten cities." 

This interpretation is consistent with the whole narrative, and 
with the circumstances under which it was uttered, and the state 
of mind of those to whom it was addressed. As far as practi- 



GOING TO JERUSALEM. 541 

cable it corrected all their misapprehensions before their arrival in 
Jerusalem. 

The Passover was approaching. Many had gone up from the 
country to Jerusalem to make ceremonial purification for the great 
festival. These persons hoped to find the marvellous Teacher in 
the Holy City. They made inquiry among themselves, saying : 
" What think you ; that he will not come up to the feast % " This 
special form of the inquiry is recorded by John, who states as a 
reason for it that the church authorities had given directions that 
if any should discover where Jesus was, information should be 
given at once that the church might seize him. 

" Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany." This 
note of time assists us in adjusting the chronologic connection of 
events. It does not fix with precision the exact „ . . „ . 

r ■ Bethany. Fri- 

day of the arrival in Bethany. That will depend a a y 5 3i s t March, 

upon the mode of calculation of each reckoner, and Saturday, 1st 

(See Andrews, p. 396-398.) The six days may A P ril > AD - 80 - 

include both the Passover and the dav of arrival, . a , ^ v1 -' . ir 

xiv. ; J ohn xn. 1 . 

or include the former and exclude the latter, 
or include the latter and exclude the former, or exclude both. 
Robinson, including both days, makes his arrival on Saturday ; 
Strong, by the same computation, fixes it on Sunday — Robinson 
putting the Passover on Thursday, and Strong on Friday. Gres- 
well agrees with Robinson, and Luthardt with Strong, but reach 
these several conclusions by other processes. The language of 
Moses is, "In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the 
Lord's Passover." (Levit. xxiii. 5.) The first month is Nisan, 
and six days before the 14th must have been on the 8th of Nisati. 
But when did the 14th Nisan fall? on Thursday or Friday? In 
this case my opinion agrees with that of the great majority of 
reckoners in fixing the Passover on Thursday ; and, not including 
the Passover, the date of the arrival will be Friday. 

The correctness of this conclusion is favored by the consider- 
ation that Jesus would not unnecessarily travel fifteen miles from 
Jericho to Bethany on the Sabbath, nor is it possible that he jour- 
neyed part of the way on Friday and then finished the journey 
after sunset of Saturday, the Sabbath, as between the two towns 
was a wilderness with no stopping-place, and the road is exceed- 
ingly bad ; and moreover, he was with a cavalcade of pilgrims 
pushing towards the Holy City. It would seem that he probably 



542 FK0M FEAST CF TABERNACLES UNTIL THE LAST WEEK. 

reached Jericho in the evening of Thursday, 7 Nisan (30th 
March), remained all night with Zacchaeus, made the whole jour- 
ney to Bethany the next day, reaching the place that evening 
before the beginning of the Sabbath. He knew that it was to be a 
week of conflict and anguish, and he would naturally desire to be 
with his friends of Bethany, refreshing himself in their quiet 
home. 

It was soon reported in Jerusalem that Jesus was at the house 
of Lazarus. Great crowds began to stream out to the little vil- 
lage, whicli was less than a Sabbath-day's jour- 
Crowds flock tO n , T • , rni -i -ii • -i 

ney rrom the city. I here was a double induce- 

666 hlTT\ ** ■ 

ment : they might see Jesus, and at the same time 

gaze upon Lazarus, who had had the strange experience of being 

raised from the dead. This combined attractiveness of Jesus and 

his friend Lazarus incensed the church, and an ecclesiastical 

council was held to compass the death of both, because Lazarus 

was living proof that Jesus possessed the strange power of raising 

the dead, and those who saw them both together believed on 

Jesus. It was decided to destroy both men after the Passover. 

They had not then calculated upon the assistance of Judas, whose 

co-operation hastened the consummation of their plans. 

The Sabbath — Saturday, April 1 — was spent in 

the quiet of the house of Lazarus. It was the 
Jesus. ■*■ 

last Sabbath in the career of Jesus, and it was 

appropriate to spend it with the beloved family of Bethany. 



PAET VIL 

THE LAST WEEK. 

FROM APRIL 1 TO APRIL 8, A.D. 30. 



CHAPTER I, 



THE FIRST DAT FROM SATURDAY EVENING TO SUNDAY EVENING. 

Sunday morning came. The Sabbath had ended. Jesus and 
his followers took up their journey to Jerusalem. It was a gay 
time in the national calendar. The crowds of 
pilgrims going up to the great feast received ac- _ _ 

1 & o o a -xx-rT j> t an y an< * Jerusa- 

cessions every hour. When the party of Jesus lem p a im-Snn- 
reached a village called Bethphage, which means day, April 2. Matt. 
House of Figs, the site of which it seems not xxi - ; Mark xi - ; 
possible now to identify, but which lay some- . u e X1X ' ; t0 
where on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent forth 
two of his disciples, saying, " Go into the village over against you, 
and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and with her a foal 
whereon never man sat ; having loosed them, bring them unto me. 
And if any one say anything to you, you shall say, ' The Lord has 
need of them,' and immediately he will send them." 

The disciples went on their errand and found a colt tied outside 
a door at a cross-roads. When they commenced to untie it the 
owners said, " What are you doing, loosing that colt ? " When the 
disciples repeated the words of Jesus, the objectors said no more, 
but let them take it away. It would seem that the dam followed 
the foal. It was natural that they should keep together. The 
presence of the ass kept the colt quiet. On the latter the disciples 
of Jesus spread their garments, and he sat on them, and thus rode 
forward down the Mount, in the midst of the cavalcade. The 



544 



THE LAST WEEK. 



Jesus riding. 



historian Matthew says that in the doing of this was fulfilled what 
was spoken through the prophet, " Tell the daughter of Zion, see 
your King comes to you, meek, and sitting upon an ass, even upon 
a foal, an offspring of a beast of burden." * 

Why Jesus should have done this is a question which naturally 
arrests us at this point. It is manifest, from the whole tenor of 
the history, that he felt that his hour was now about 
to come. He expected to stand no more by the 
Sea of Galilee, or walk the streets of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and 
the other places which had been his haunts. He addressed him- 
self as to a last conflict with his foes. They had laid a price upon 
his head. He did not intend to evade their vigilance, but he in- 
tended not to throw himself recklessly into their hands. There- 
fore he always left the city in the evening, spending the night in 
a neighboring village, and returning to the Temple-service in the 
morning. But he would avoid no responsibility of his position- 
He rode into Jerusalem. There should be no pomp, and there- 
fore no blooded steed with rich caparisons and insignia of royalty 
should carry him. An ass's colt should testify at once his poverty 
and his dignity. He went in so lifted up that all the people might 
see him, and " the church " should perceive that he was not afraid 
of his fate. 



* Strauss {Life of Jesus, ii. 291) holds 
that the "Evangelical narratives" of 
this advance of Jesus to Jerusalem ' ' are 
formed not so much upon a given fact 
as upon Old Testament passages and 
dogmatic ideas." In proof of which 
he cites Matthew's account of the two 
disciples bringing two animals, and 
spreading the garments upon both, and 
setting Jesus upon both. He accounts 
for this by Matthew's want of sense and 
misapprehension of the passage in Zech- 
ariah (ix. 9). Matthew "paralyzes" 
"the understanding" of Dr. Strauss 
when he seems to represent Jesus as 
riding both animals at once! and the 
Doctor recovers himself only when he 
examines Zechariah, where it is written 
in Hebrew parallelism — ■ 

" Lowly — and riding upon an ass, 
And upon a colt, the foal of an ass." 

Matthew had read that, and supposed 



that the fulfilment of the prophecy ne- 
cessitated the riding of two animals 
at once, and so he made the history con- 
form to his dogmatic ideas ! But no one 
would charge Dr. Strauss with being so 
poor a Hebrew scholar as not to be quite 
familiar with the Hebrew poetic forms. 
As soon as he turned to the text in Zech- 
ariah he knew that the second line was 
a mere parallelism, being equivalent to 
and expounding the idea in the first line, 
the ass in the one being identical with 
the foal in the other, the second simply 
amplifying the first. Matthew certain- 
ly was as good a Hebrew scholar as 
Dr. Strauss, and the writings of the for- 
mer, examined critically, show quite as 
much common sense as the latter. This 
\ ' paralyzing of the understanding " is an 
affectation unworthy one who sets up 
for critic on the most influential of aU 
the productions of literature. 



THE FIRST DAY. 545 

As the cavalcade descended the sides of the Mount of Olives 
they met a crowd composed of the friends of Jesus, of those who 

had admiration of him, of those whom curiosity 

ii • ,/»i -lii , A great crowd, 

and the excitement ot me occasion had drawn to- 
gether, coming out to meet Jesus, who was reported to be approach- 
ing the city. With the former Lazarus was undoubtedly present, 
and with the latter the emissaries of the church party. The meet- 
ing of these tides of people heightened the excitement. They cut 
branches from the trees and strewed them on the road. They 
took their very garments from their shoulders and spread them 
before the colt that bore Jesus. Their hopes of the setting up of 
the Messianic kingdom waxed warm. They shouted, " Hosanna 
to the Son of David ! Be praised the King of Israel, coming in 
the name of the Lord ! Peace in heaven ! Hosanna in the high- 
est!" 

This Messianic shout of joy was taken from the Psalm cxviii. 
25. The series of Psalms from cxiii. to cxviii., inclusive, called 
the Great Hallel, was usually chanted by the priests, the whole 
multitude of worshippers waving branches of willow and palm, 
and at certain intervals shouting the response, " O Lord, I beseech 
thee, send now prosperity." This was the Hallelujah or Hosanna. 
The children who were old enough to wave the branches and re- 
peat the words joined in the responses. The willow wands them- 
selves came to be called Hosannas. And so whenever there were 
occasions of happy excitement and joyous anticipation, this pas- 
sage from the Psalm became its form of utterance. 

There were true hearts out of which this cry of joy went up in 
utmost sincerity ; but the mass of the people were carried away 
with a wild kind of excitement which had no sub- 
stantial basis of faith. They were a festival pop- 
ulation, the people of the city and the vicinity, whose bread was 
in the maintenance of the sacred metropolitan character of Jeru- 
salem. As the mass of the citizens of Rome at this day, artists 
and artisans, depend for their livelihood upon Rome's being kept 
the centre of ecclesiastical attraction, and might therefore regret 
any movement which should take the Papal throne from the city 
or break up a system which by repeated festivals and processions 
and spectacular exhibitions of surpassing ecclesiastical splendor 
draws thousands of visitors and tens of thousands of dollars an- 
nually to Rome, but might favor any candidate for the Papacy 
35 



546 THE LAST WEEK. 

who should promise a vast increase of these attractions, so these 
Jerusalemites did this Sunday shout "Hosanna" to the young 
Teacher, after whom they cried, " Crucify him, crucify him," on 
the following Friday. 

Jesus knew the hollo wness of this parade and of this eulogistic 
uproar. He allowed himself to be addressed as Messiah. If any 

sifiister political interpretation were given it, he 

could appeal to his whole course heretofore. He 
would try his nation. He meant to be their spiritual leader, and 
set them free by making them fit to be free, if they would accept 
such leadership as that. They meant to make him kin'g of the 
nation civilly, the royal successor of the royal David, the Messiah 
who should break the Roman yoke, and bring the nations to be 
tributaries' of the Holy People, planting the banners of the Hebrew 
faith and polity on every high place of the earth, and making 
Jerusalem the "World-Metropolis. He could not induce them to 
accept him as such a king as he meant to be, and he would not be 
such a king as they desired. They could not induce him to fulfil 
their wishes, and they would not comply with his requirements. 
This Palm- Sunday they tried their experiment, hoping to betray 
him in a moment of excitement into the assumption of a position 
from which he could not retreat until he had carried out their de- 
signs. He spent the week in one last long effort to lift them to 
his plane of vision. They failed. He failed. The same multi 
tude, when they found they had failed, wheeled into line with 
the forces of the church, and increased the weight that was flung 
on the lofty and lovely young Dissenter and Heretic to crush him 
out of the world. 

The emissaries of the church failed to understand the temper 
of this festive mob, and felt as if their case was about to be lost. 

They said to one another, each blaming his neigh- 
The c urc ^ or £ Qr mem * c i enC y as men j n sncn circumstances 
frightened. _ [r _•' . 

are wont to do, " Do you not perceive how ye pre- 
vail nothing ? Behold the world is gone after him ! " It really 
seemed as if the world had gone after him. As they looked upon 
the mountain side it was covered with an immense multitude, and 
when these waved their branches and shouted their song the clear 
air was filled with the multitudinous music ; and the enemies of 
Jesus, clad in robes of priestly authority, sitting in the high places 
of churchly power, plotting the murder of Jesus, heard that shout, 



THE FIRST DAT. 547 

and shook in. their timorous pride as Jesus neared the city, sitting 
simple and quiet on the ass's colt, a pure personage without pre- 
tence, a good man to be flung up against the rock of the church 
by the billows of the popular enthusiasm, and left there to perish 
when that tide ebbed, but who now seemed to priest and Pharisee 
a bitter riddle of destiny, whose presence shook them with aD 
ague of fear and inflamed them with a fever of hatred. 

Some of that party being with the multitude, and offended by 
this open acknowledgment of his Messiahship, said to Jesus, 
" Teacher, rebuke your disciples : " which far from doing, Jesua 
answered, " I tell you that if these should be silent the stones will 
cry out;" signifying by this proverbial expression, "Do you ex- 
pect my disciples to be harder than stones ? They have followed 
me through my years of ministry, they have seen me open the 
eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf, and cleanse the 
skin of the leper, and raise the very dead, and now they see the 
general people acknowledge me : are they stones that they should 
show no emotion?" 

Then they came in sight of the city. From the summit of 

Mount Olives the view of Jerusalem on the opposite heights is very 

imposing. The Crusaders broke into jubilation 

, * « -.i-i-i., -n, T-ii-i rn sight of Je- 

when they first beheld it. But now Jesus looked msa]em 

with profound sadness at its walls and temples, 
and dwellings and towers, with its thousands of historical associa- 
tions, of kings and prophets and holy men, of splendid worship 
and bitter bigotry and deeds of violence, in the days of its glory 
and the days of its gloom, the city of the Great King now held 
as an outpost of a heathen empire. It was his Father's House 
on earth. It was the repository of the oracles of God. But now 
it was about to reject, to betray, and to murder him. What 
a city it might speedily become if it would but be the first to 
accept the form of civilization he could give, and the spiritualized 
forms of faith he could impart ! Its doom rose up before his mind. 
This great city was hastening to a direful catastrophe and knew it 
not. The very spirit which led the reigning party in Jerusalem to 
reject Jesus would precipitate the city into such acts as should 
bring down upon it the crushing arm of the Roman Empire. He 
foresaw all that. He was " a man that could certainly divine." 
He beheld the Roman cohorts encamped with their engines of wa r 
laying siege to the city of David. He saw the fagot and the sword 



548 THE LAST WEEK. 

carrying destruction to buildings, and death to men, and worse 
than death to women. He saw the Roman eagle flaunting in the 
holy place, and the priests murdered as they attempted to flee, and 
ferocity and lust penetrating everywhere, and soiling and tram- 
pling and ruining everything sacred in man, or woman, or temple. 
It swept over the city of the House of God. His was .a great, en- 
during, tender nature. This outburst was no relieving shower of 
sentiment overflowing his eyelids ; it was the genuine expression 
of manliest noblest sorrow for a fall from an eminence so august 
to an abyss so base, that never in the ages would Jerusalem climb 
back to the splendid exaltation from which she was about to be 
toppled. 

Amid his sobs his disciples heard him apostrophizing the city in 

these tear-wet words. " If thou hadst known — in this day — even 

thou — the things for peace ! But now — they are 

Jesus apostro- i • -, n ,-1 . i-n -i in 

phizes Jerusalem. hld f r0m thllie e J e& l ~ For <% S sha11 COme U P 0n 
thee when thine enemies shall cast a trench about 

thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, — 
and shall level thee with the ground, and thy children in thee : and 
they shall not leave in thee stone upon stone, because thou know- 
est not the day of thy visitation ! " 

Down the slopes of the Olive Mount, past the Gethsemane Gar- 
den, over the Kedron Creek, went the Palm-Sunday procession. 

Serene and sad sat Jesus on the colt as the singing 
and Temple cavalcade, ascending to the white walls, passed 

through the gates into the streets of Jerusalem, 
making the city to ring with the gladness of their exuberant song. 
From the lowliest, Jesus had ascended to the highest place in the 
nation. This festal procession was becoming something like a 
royal cortege. All the city was moved. Out of the windows 
peered priest and Pharisee, and said, "Who is this?" And the 
people answered, " This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of 
Galilee." Perhaps those who answered were Galilseans themselves, 
and, becoming proud of the prophet that had sprung from their 
country, they made a response which was the very answer, whether 
so intended or not, to anger the hierarchic party. But the tone in 
which the popular party answered the priestly party sounds to me 
like an abatement of enthusiasm. They do not cry out, " This is 
the King of Israel coming in the name of the Lord ! Come down, 
ye priests and Pharisees, and render him homage." Jesus doubt- 
less felt all this abatement of popular zeaL 



THE FIRST DAY. 549 

Jesus went forthwith to the Temple, and made an inspection of 
all things in the holy place. 

There were certain Greeks, probably Jewish proselytes, who had 

come np to the feast, and, with all that intellectual inquisitive- 

ness which marked the Hellenistic character, they 

T -r-r , . Greeks seek him. 

were eager to see Jesus. He was a fresh phe- 
nomenon of humanity. They seem to have been people of cul- 
ture. They were at least polite, and did not intrude on the Great 
Teacher, but communicated their desires to Philip of Bethsaida. 
Perhaps Philip had Greek blood in him, as his name indicates. 
He certainly had modesty. Although these Greeks represented 
the most polished forms of civilization, they were, by Hebrew 
narrowness, regarded as the lowest class of worshippers in the 
great Temple. He consulted his brother disciple Andrew, and 
upon agreement they both told Jesus. 

So far from meeting a repulse these disciples found that the very 
message filled Jesus with a strange joy. He welcomed the Greeks, 
and said to them and to his disciples, " The hour is come that the 
Son of Man should be glorified. I most assuredly say to you, That 
except a grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it abides alone ; 
but if it die, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, 
and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it unto perpet 
ual life. If any one serve me, let him follow me ; and where 1 
am, there also shall my servant be. If any man serve me, the 
Father will honor him." 

The shouts of the people did not exhilarate Jesus, did not for a 
moment throw him from his mental equipoise. Indeed Jesus 
seems grand in his solitary sadness amid this po- 
pular gladness. But the coming of the Greeks t k erew itii 
6eems a great delight to him. He is thereby 
glorified. To say so was disloyalty and heresy. It was enough 
that as proselytes they were barely admitted within holy precincts. 
Loyalty to Hebrew traditions demanded contempt of pagans, and 
loyalty to the church par|^ demanded contempt for all the world 
that did not live as the Pharisees directed and worship as the priests 
taught. But the soul of Jesus was so tall as to look over the pale 
of man's church ; indeed to perceive that that rotten structure was 
to be by himself felled to the ground, that the whole world might 
be let into one. That was his glorification. It required martyrdom 
to accomplish it, and he was going to endure that martyrdom and 



550 



THE LAST WEEK. 



accomplish that glorious bringing of all peoples into one. The 
births of life are through the husks and corruption of death, a 
truth which finds forceful and beautiful illustration in vegetable 
reprod action. The man who, like the foolish farmer, will not 
sow his wheat because he desires to save his wheat, will surely 
lose it all. " To hate " one's life is a Hebraism signifying to 
" value less." He who values this present form of life less than 
the life which is perpetual shall keep both this and that. Jesus 
intended to yield this petty Palm-Sunday triumph, and even the 
apparently more substantial royalty of supreme civil rule, so that 
he might live in the lives of the world and be king over the 
hearts of the ages. He desired his disciples to follow his example, 
and promised that all who did, whatever earthly distinctions they 
might miss, should have honor from God. 

Then a great shudder passed through him, and he said, " Now is 
my soul troubled : and what shall I say ? " He paused. He had 
not been misled for an instant. He knew where all this would 
end. The horror of death came upon him. He cried out, " Father, 
save me from this hour." It was a natural cry. It was the 
instinctive love of life. If he had yielded and pressed that ques- 
tion, it would have been that loving of life which loses it. He 
rallied. No ; he will not sacrifice the perpetual to the temporary. 
He said, " But on this account came I to this hour. Father, glo- 
rify thy name." We do not know what Jesus meant by " on this 
account." There was something in his mind which did not, per- 
haps could not, come out in words. It was a great soul in a 
frightful spiritual storm. In his agitation the anguish compelled 
the utterance of the first prayer. He was strong enough to reverse 
it, and to change it instantly from " my deliverance " to " thy glory." 

A notable thing then occurred. A sound was heard. It seemed 
to be a voice from heaven. Three interpretations were given to 
it. Some said it thundered. Some said, " An 
angel has spoken to him." Some said there were 
these words spoken : " And I have glo^fied, and I will glorify." 
It is plain that all heard a sound. The three interpretations are 
to be explained on two grounds, the difference in relative position 
and the difference in psychical condition. Thus on the more dis- 
tant it may have produced only the impression of an inarticulate 
heavy noise like thunder ; on those nearer, the impression of arti- 
culate yet confused utterances, articulate in themselves but not dis- 



THE FIRST DAY. 551 

tinct to the hearers ; on the nearest, the very syllables which are 
repeated in the history. Or Jesus himself may have heard these 
words, and have given a subsequent explanation of them to hia 
disciples. Again, on the supposition that these very w T ords were 
spoken, there were but few who were so receptive as to hear 
them, while to others they sounded like a voice in the air, and to 
others like thunder. 

This latter view of the case seems to me the more reasonable. 
That God has spoken to man, all believe who are not atheists 01 
the most dreary materialists. Instances in which 
men of good understanding have believed that 
they heard voices are not to be put aside by our grossly material 
philosophy as the hallucinations of a diseased mind. The Jewish 
writers speak of the Bath-Kol, bi'p-na , the daughter of the voice, 
as a kind of second voice, an internal articulation, addressed to 
the inner sense by the good God, and second in authority only to 
the inspiration enjoyed by the Old Testament prophets. The 
Targum and Midrash represent it as the actual medium of divine 
communication with Abraham, Moses, David, Nebuchadnezzar, 
etc. In the history of the early Christians we have accounts of 
a " voice or voices," as in the conversion of Saul and the vision 
of Peter. (Acts ix. 7, x. 13, 15.) Josephus tells of a " voice," 
supposed by some to be the Bath-Kol, which informed Ilyreanus 
that his sons had conquered Antiochus. (Ant., xiii. 10, 3.) The 
same historian relates that, just before the fall of Jerusalem, one 
night as the priests were going into the Temple to perform their 
sacred ministrations, they heard a multitudinous voice saying, 
" Let us go hence." ( War, vi. 53.) Similar instances might be 
adduced from the records of all succeeding ages like the " tolle, 
lege," take, read, w^hich Augustine heard when he was converted. 
Perhaps any finely organized reader of this page will bring 
from his memory something similar in his own experience. 

It is scarcely philosophical to call these fancies. Our modern 
science instructs us that the phenomena which are able to affect 
objectively do exist subjectively in every man's constitution. 
Thus there is something existing subjectively in every man w/hieli 
responds to the objective impingement of the atmospheric waves 
on the tympanum. Now, unless one be an atheist, or, believing 
in the existence of God, believe that He never desires to com- 
municate with man, or desiring to communicate, has not left open 



552 THE LAST WEEK. 

to Himself every avenue of approach, which is free to a man's 
fellow-men, I can see no difficulty in receiving the theory that 
this God can form in a man, immediately, the very sensations and 
perceptions which are produced mediately by his fellow-men 
who form sounds in the brain of the hearer, through the audi- 
tory nerves, by waves of air which the speaker sets in motion. 
Even then each man's impression would be measured by his capabi- 
lities of reception, as in an audience of a thousand there are a 
thousand different results produced by the same speech ; as on 
the exhibition of a picture to a thousand persons, a thousand dif- 
ferent impressions have been made. To any human or divine 
fountain, whosoever comes carries away just so much water as his 
vessel holds. 

Jesus recognized the voice. He was no fanatic. Through his 
whole history nothing is more apparent than the absence of all 
fanaticism. He is no trickster. Nothing seems 
more open than his public life. His whole his- 
tory is like a structure which is all windows. From any side one 
sees all through. He said, " This voice came not on my account, 
but for you. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the 
prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all things unto myself." John says that he 
said this signifying what manner of death he should die. He felt 
sure that he was to be crucified. He felt sure that that which 
his enemies supposed would be a wall between him and the 
world, keeping all men away from him, namely, his death of 
ignominy, would be a position of elevation from which he should 
exert the attractive influence of his great character on the whole 
world. 

Then a voice, representing the skepticism of the multitude, 

said, "We have heard out of the law that the Christ abides through 

the ages, and how do you say that it is necessary 

Christ abides that the Son of Man be lifted up ? Who is this 
forever. 

Son of Man?" It seems clear from this that the 

name " Son of Man," to the apprehension of the common people, 

was identical with the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed Saviour 

of Israel. Of him the people had a belief, gathered from their 

sacred writings, that he should abide forever, and this they intei- 

preted in a sensuous manner. If the reader will take the pains 

to consult the passages in Isaiah ix. 7, and Daniel vii. 14, he will 



THE FIRST DAT. 



553 



see how easy it was for minds not given to the study of spiritual 
things, but filled with violent national prejudices, to make an in- 
terpretation like that these people placed on the words. It is also 
clear that in some part of his sayings that day Jesus had called 
himself the Son of Man. Especially were they unprepared now 
to give up so suddenly the hopes which the Palm procession had 
so greatly kindled. He, Jesus, was to be the Messiah, to remain 
on the throne of David forever, to administer a government which 
should have no end, to subdue all peoples to the Hebrew theo- 
cracy ; and now he speaks as if he were the Son of Man, on whom 
is laid the necessity of being crucified. They never suspect the 
soundness of their own orthodoxy nor the correctness of their own 
logic, by which, from a perpetual reign, they had inferred a per- 
petual personal presence of the Messiah. 

Jesus does not resolve this question directly. He says simply, 
" Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness may not over- 
take you : for he who walks in darkness knows not where he goes. 
As you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be sons 
of the light." As if he had said : You need not perplex your- 
selves with questions whose solution one way or another would 
have no benefit on your moral character. Do what your present 
duty enjoins. Go forward. Children are obedient to their parents. 
" Children of the light " is a Hebraism for those who are obedi- 
ent to the light. 

Thus ended Sunday the 2d of April. 

Jesus went out of the city as the evening approached, and over 
the darkening hills took his way to Bethany, where he lodged thai 
night. 




STATER— ANTIOCHT7S EPIPHANES. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE SECOND DAY FROM SUNDAY EVENING- TO MONDAY EVENING. 

The second day of the week found Jesus early on the road 
accompanied by his disciples, going up to Jerusalem. The record 

B t B th- ^ s tnatne was hungry. Why the early morn should 
any and Jerusa- n 'nd him so, when he might have broken fast with 
lem. Monday, 3d his friends in Bethany, is not so very clear. He 
April. Matt, xxi.; Mia y ] iave spent the night in devotion, and, being 
joined by his disciples before sunrise, proceeded 
at once to the city, knowing that his time was short, and it be- 
hooved him to do promptly all that he would do before the final 
catastrophe. 

As they were going towards the city he saw a solitary hg-tree 

on the roadside, at some distance in advance, and was attracted 

by its display of leafage. He approached it, if 

e arren g- j^pjy ^ e m ight find something on it. There was 

no fruit; there was nothing but leaves. He said 

to it, "May no one, to the end of this age, eat fruit of you!" 

We shall see that the next morning the disciples noticed that it 

was utterly withered. 

Few passages in the life of Jesus have been so perplexing to his 
friends, and such an apparent vantage-ground to those who either 
dislike Jesus or disbelieve his history as this. The destructive 
critics, such as Dr. Strauss, call it " a vindictive miracle." This 
author calls attention to the fact that "it is the only one of its 
kind in the Evangelical history." The friends of both the his- 
torian and Jesus have felt that it is a passage specially pressed 
with difficulties. It is a flaw in the crystal, a muddy place in the 
clear stream, an ugly cloud on the pure sky. And so the com- 
mentators have endeavored to explain away what seems to obscure 
the character of Jesus in this act. But after all attempts there 
stands the fact that Jesus cursed a tree, and it withered. It was 
a miracle. Was it vindictive? If Jesus was angry, had he just 



THE SECOND DAY. 555 

cause to be angry ? He had his passions. There is no more sin 
in anger than in hunger, in the abstract. But was he at all 
angry ! 

The trouble in the narrative is that it is believed to tell the fol 
lowing story, namely : Jesus saw a fig-tree in full leaf ; he was 
hungry, and went to it, hoping to be able to gather 
figs ; he was disappointed ; he was angered ; he 
cursed the tree: under that curse it withered. 
This is not a pleasant picture of a great and good man. The dif- 
ficulty is increased by the statement of Mark, " for it was not the 
season of figs." Then the tree could not reasonably have been 
expected to have figs. It is treated as a free moral agent, being 
only a vegetable, and is then destroyed for not doing what it could 
not do. This seems a hard fate for the tree, and unhandsome con- 
duct in Jesus. 

To abate the embarrassment, one commentator * proposes a 
change in the reading of the Greek, so that it shall read, " whero 
he was it was the season of figs." This has two difficulties, 1. 
There is no codex that justifies this reading ; and, 2. It was not a 
fact. He was in the rocky regions of Judaea, and it was early in 
April. Josephus tells us that in the neighborhood of the Sea of 
Galilee figs grew ten months in the year ; but this was not true of 
the vicinity of Jerusalem. Equally futile is the suggestion of 
another, to read the passage as a question : " For was it not the 
season of figs?" Of course it was not. Moreover, that style does 
not appear in Mark. While he is a graphic word-painter, he has 
no emotional rhetoric. The same may be said of another f sug- 
gestion : " it was not a good season for figs." There is no author- 
ity for the reading, and it was quite too early in the year to de- 
clare whether it was to be a good season or not. Another explan- 
ation is that the "fig harvest" had not yet arrived ; that is, Jesus 
came expecting fruit, because the time in which the figs were 
gathered had not yet come, so that there could not be the explan- 
ation that there had been a good crop, and that it had been gath- 
ered. This is more nearly reasonable than the others. But still 
there is the fact, in the natural history of the fig, that it does not 
ordinarily ripen in Palestine until June. We are told there is an 
early kind which has been gathered as far up as Lebanon as early 

* Heinsius, Exercit. Sac., ed. 1639, p. | f Hammond, Annot. ad S. Marc 
116. 



556 THE LAST WEEK. 

as May, yet the general time of ripening is June. There are othei 
interpretations, but these will suffice as samples. 

It is to be observed that none of these explanations touch the 
root of the matter — the destruction of an inanimate object because 
it was not in the condition in which it was expected to be found. 

Friends and foes seem to agree on one point, which Dr. Strauss 

states thus : " Mark adds these words in order to explain, — what 

in the case of a particular tree may be easily ex- 

A great mistake. ■, . , . « . , ,. „ , , 

plained, even m ng-time, by disease or from local 

causes, — why Jesus found no fruit upon it? It seems to me that 
Mark did no such thing. It was not the absence of fruit but the 
presence of leaves which Mark sought to explain. It appears that 
in the case of the fig the fruit often appears before, and generally 
with, the leaves ; the early fruit comes before the leaves, which 
do not appear until late in the season.* Indeed, the appearance 
of fig-leaves is one of the signs of approaching summer, as Jesus 
said (Matthew xxiv. 32), " When its branch . . . puts forth 
leaves you know that the summer is nigh." If the yap in the 
original be translated " although " instead of " for," it seems to 
me that great help will be afforded to the proper comprehension 
of the passage. ~No man was expecting figs ; but as they went 
towards Jerusalem, in these first days of April, they saw a fig- 
tree in foliage, " although it was not the season of figs." If leaves, 
then there should have been fruit, for the fruit comes first. Jesus 
was not angry, but, as was usual with Oriental teachers, when he 
found occasion to teach a lesson symbolically, he seized the occa- 
sion. 

He blighted the tree not because it did not have fruit, but be- 
cause being fruitless it did have leaves. The tree stood a symbol 
of the Jewish people, leafy and fruitless ; in 
grea ss . ac [ var , ce f a |] ^} ie na tions of the earth in religious 
pretensions, while being at the same time quite as destitute of 
real fruit as the Greeks and Romans and others, whom they re- 
garded as barbarians and pagans. In a special manner that par- 
ticular sect of the Jews called the Pharisees leafed out into mani- 
fold baptisms, and minute tithings, and excessive fastings, and 
broadened phylacteries, while the fruits of piety and humanity 
were nowhere to be found in their lives. The act of Jesus was 
not vindictive, but didactic ; he did no harm to the tree, while he 
* Hackett's Illus. of Scriptures, p. 141. 



THE SECOND DAY. 



557 



A grand truth. 



impressed a profound lesson upon his disciples by what may be 
considered an acted Parable and Prophecy. 

But there is still another consideration which seems to me more 
important than all others. Possessing power to smite and tc 
destroy, and being about to yield himself volun- 
tarily to death, a death from which he might 
easily extricate himself by destroying all his enemies, it was im- 
portant that the world should know that he had this power; 
otherwise the grandeur of his self-sacrifice would be unknown to 
the race. There were only two ways in which he could exhibit 
it, by smiting things animate or things inanimate. It was in pur- 
est mercy that he chose the latter. We now know what he could 
have done when bound, and buffeted, and insulted, and led out 
to be crucified. He could have made Caiaphas, or Pilate, or 
Herod, or the Roman centurion the blasted result of the exercise 
of his power. To know that he had this power, and did not exert 
it on men, under the circumstances, is the grandest display of 
mercy possible to man, and, let it be said devoutly, possible to 
God. It is worth more than all the trees that ever grew. Plant 
this stricken tree of Tuesday beside the cross of Friday, and you 
have a suggestion worth the study of man through all ages of time 
and of eternity. 

We have seen that very early in his ministry Jesus had entered 

the Temple and rebuked its secularization by driving the profaning 

money-changers from the sacred precincts. (See 

-icxn\ t, i ,i i Second cleansing 

p. 126.) It does not seem to have made a per- f the Temple 

manent cure of the evil. The Temple-market as 
it was called, tabernce, where animals for sacrifice, and oil, and 
wine, and salt, and incense, were sold to worshippers, and the 
uncurrent and profane coin of those who came from distant coun- 
tries was exchanged, had been set up again in the Court of the 
Gentiles. Again Jesus overturned the tables of the money- 
changers and the seats of the dove-sellers, and drove these mer- 
chants from the House of God, and forbade the carrying of uten- 
sils through the Holy House, as if it were a common edifice.* 



* It is supposed that operatives and 
mechanics on their way to work stepped 
in for worship, bringing their tools with 
them and setting them down while they 
prayed, thus making the Temple a com- 
mon-place. Perhaps also, rather than 



take a longer way around, those who 
were engaged about the Temple carried 
utensils through the holy places. It 
was the general secularization of holy 
things which Jesus rebuked and endeav- 
ored to reform. 



558 THE LAST WEEK. 

It is to be noticed that the first cleansing of the Temple, at the 
beginning of his ministry, was performed by Jesus as an act of 
zeal on his part as a prophet. The learned Selden * and others 
maintain the existence of a zealot-right, which justified one who 
was moved by sudden uncontrollable prophetic impulse to attack 
existing irregularities in the national worship. In some such 
spirit Jesus seems to have performed the first cleansing. This 
second purification appears to be made in character of Messiah. 
The people were giving him such a recognition. He could not, 
in such a position, allow this profanation of the Temple of God. 
It is to be noticed that the first purification excelled in violence of 
act, and the second in severity of word. In both cases there was 
a majesty and moral force in the very presence of Jesus, which 
accomplished the cleaning of the courts by the quick disappear- 
ance of the merchants. Freely combining and using two passages 
from the prophetic writings, Isaiah lvi. 7, and Jer. vii. 11, he says : 
" Is it not written that My house shall be called a house of prayer 
for all the nations \ But you are making it a den of robbers." The 
charge is that The Church had become at once narrow and pro- 
fane. God's religion has the spirit of universality ; it is a religion 
for all the nations ; theirs excluded the nations, and where Human- 
ity should have been represented there was a body of thieves. 

These fine discriminations are characteristic of Jesus — discri- 
minations which escape ordinary observation, but which, when 
once made by him, summon the history of the 

Fine discrimina- -i -• , ,, . n , T 

. . world to their demonstration. In every age we 

can now see, since Jesus has indicated it, that 
there is an exceedingly slight difference between a bigot and a 
thief. He who is unwilling to allow to his fellow-man the 
spiritual rights he has in virtue of being a man, will not long 
hesitate to take from him his material properties. And he who 
will cheat a saint will not long hesitate, when he has an oppor- 
tunity, to defraud a sinner. 

This severity was followed by acts of mercy. Blind and lame 

people came to him, and he healed them publicly in the Temple. 

The children caught the general enthusiasm. The 

" remembrance of Palm-Sunday jubilations and the 

sight of the discomfited merchants, and of the healed patients, 

* De Jure Nat. et Gent. , iv. 6. The | Phinehas, Numb. xxv. 11. 
supposition is suggested by the act of 



THE SECOND DAT. 559 

whose sight and activity had been restored, kindled the ardor of 
the young, and they sang around the powerful Teacher, " Hosanna 
to the Son of David." It gave sore displeasure to the churchmen 
to see a man who was not in the succession, not of the tribe of 
Aaron, doing things more wonderful than miracles, and receiving 
these Messianic salutations. To the latter they called his atten- 
tion, pointing to the children, and saying : " Do you hear what 
these say ? " His reply was prompt and emphatic : " Yes ! Have 
you never read, ' Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Tliou 
hast perfected praise ? ' " (Psalm viii. 2.) They did not believe 
that he was the Messiah in any sense. The children employed 
words from the sacred writings which, whatever sense their ten- 
der minds may have seen in them, no man could accept who did 
not believe himself to be the Messiah in some sense. Jesus did 
accept them. 

More and more the malignity of the church deepened against 
him. The scribes and chief priests sought how they might destroy 
him ; for they feared him because the people were astonished at 
his teaching. During the day he taught in the Temple. "When 
the evening came he retired to rest in Bethany. 



CHAPTEK III. 



THE THIRD DAY FROM MONDAY EVENING TO TUESDAY EVENING. 

The morning of the third day found Jesus and his disciples re- 
turning to Jerusalem. It would seem to have been dark when 
they crossed the Mount of Olives the evening be- 
fore, so dark that they had not noticed the condi- 
tion of the fig-tree which they had visited the morn- 
ing previous. But now its appearance arrested 



Bethany and Je- 
rusalem. Tuesday, 
3d April, 12th Ni- 
san, a. u. 783. 
Matt, xxi., xxii., 
xxiii. , xxiv. , xxv. , 
xxvi. ; Mark xi , 
xi;., xiii., xiv. ; 
Luke xx. , xxi. 



their attention. The blight which Jesus shed 



upon it seemsto have begun to take effect at once, 
and in twenty-four hours such a change had been 
wrought that now it was dried up from the rocts. 
Peter, calling the yesterday to remembrance, 
said to Jesus : " Rabbi, see ; the fig-tree which you cursed is 
withered away." The solemn reply of Jesus was : " If you have 
faith in God, I assuredly say to you, whosoever shall say to 
this mountain, ' Be removed and cast into the sea,' and shall not 
be divided in his heart, but shall believe that what he says is 
coming, it shall be to him. On this account I say to you, All 
things whatever you pray and ask, believe that you have received, 
and they shall be to you. And when you stand praying forgive, 
if you have anything against any one, that your Father in the 
heavens may also forgive you your trespasses." * 

It is noticeable that, frequent and wonderful as has been the 
exhibition of the powers of Jesus, each fresh display strikes his 
disciples with astonishment. They had seen the dead raised, and 
now they are astonished at the withering of a fig-tree. 

Jesus turns them from astonishment at the phenomena to con- 
sider the necessary internal condition of a powerful soul to be 
that of faith in God. A literal interpretation of his words about 



* In the common version, Mark xi. 
26, there is added, "But if ye do not 
forgive, neither will your Father which 



is in heaven forgive your trespasses." 
But these words do not appear in the 
original in the oldest MSS. 



THE THIRD DAT. 



561 



removing mountains may be quite puzzling, and perhaps we 

can hardly satisfy ourselves with the suggestion that he pointed 

to the opposite mountain, on which the Temple 

, . -i * t j> »,i i • t • -i - i , Removing moun« 

stood, as meaning that, by iaitn, his disciples might tains 

be sustained in such a course as should lift the 

mountain of Judaism, and fling it out of the way of the progress 

of true religion. But it is quite natural to suppose that he taught 

that faith is superior to bodily strength, and that generally the 

spiritual forces of the universe are superior to the physical. And 

this is consistent with the spirit of the whole body of his teaching. 

As for the remainder of his speech, it is a repetition of what we 

have had in the Sermon on the Mount. 

The people assembled at an early hour in the Temple. There 

never had been so exciting a Feast in the knowledge of the oldest 

worshipper, and the occurrences of the previous 

day had increased the excitement. Soon after it „ 

the arrival of Jesus, the representatives of the 

church party, the High-Priest," accompanied by the scribes and 

the elders, came to him with that same old foolish churchly 

question, " By what authority are you doing these things ? and 



* In the Evangelists it is k ' chief 
priests." Lange says: " The plural is 
explained by the then existing relations 
of the high-priesthood. The high-priest 
was supposed legally to enjoy his func- 
tion during life (see Winer, art. Holte- 
priester) ; and before the exile we read 
of only one deposition (1 Kings ii 27). 
But since the time of the Syrian domi- 
nation the office had often changed 
hands under foreign influence ; it was 
often a foot-ball of religious and politi- 
cal parties, and sometimes even of the 
mob. This change was especially fre- 
quent under the Roman government. 
Thus Annas (Ananus) became high- 
priest seven years after the birth of 
Christ (iEra Dion.) ; seven years later 
Ishmael, at the command of the Roman 
procurator (Joseph., Antig., xviii. 2, 2) ; 
afterward Eleazer, son of Annas ; a year 
later, one Simon; and after another 
year, Joseph Caiaphas, a son-in-law of 
A mi as. Thus Caiaphas was now the i 

36 



official high-priest ; but, in consistency 
with Jewish feelings, we may assume 
that Annas was honored in connection 
with him as the properly legitimate high- 
priest. This estimation might be fur- 
ther disguised by the fact of his being 
at the same time the pD, or vicar of 
the high-priest (Lightfoot) ; or, if he 
was, the fcOfcO , president of the Sanhe- 
drim (Wieseler). Compare, however, 
Winer, sub Synednum. That, in fact, 
high respect was paid to him, is proved 
by the circumstance that Jesus was 
taken to him first for a private examin- 
ation (John xviii. 13). And thus he 
here appears to have come forward with 
the rest, in his relation of colleague to 
the official high-priest. Moreover, the 
heads of the twenty-four classes of the 
priests might be included under this 
name. Probably the whole was the re- 
sult of a very formal and solemn ordi- 
nance of the Council, at whose heads 
stood the high-priests." 



562 THE LAST WEEK. 

who gave you this authority to do these things ? " It ought not 
so much to surprise us that the bigots of the old narrow Judaism 
should ask these questions as that the nonsense of propounding 
them should have been perpetuated through eighteen centuries, 
and be in as full force in London and New York to-day, not to 
say in Home, as it was in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus. As if 
in all ages of the world the knowing of any truth does not give to 
him that knows the authority to proclaim it. As if in all ages, 
the possession of any moral power to do good does not give the 
possessor the right to exert that power. As if the luminousness 
of the intellect of Jesus, and the manifest control he held over 
the physical world, did not lift him out of the circle to which 
these stupid and powerless churchmen could with any propriety 
address such a question. But they had just that dulness of spir- 
itual perception which ordinarily accompanies narrow cunning. 
This latter trait appears in them. They hope to give him trouble 
by a dilemma. He might put forth some claim which would con- 
flict with the acknowledged canons of "the church ; " any claim 
he could make they supposed would do that ; or, if he could show 
no credentials, he would lose his hold upon the people. 

It is to be noticed that when the zeal of Jesus led him in the 
first instance, and in the beginning of his ministry, to purify the 
Temple, the church party demanded a "sign." Now, for the 
space of three years, he had been filling his ministry with marvels, 
and signs, and wonders, and miracles. It would make them 
ridiculous to demand a sign so near the very spot where Lazarus 
was raised from the dead. They now, perversely, demand his 
" authority." 

In their own nets were their feet entangled. Jesus submitted 

a counter-dilemma. They claimed to be the body set to judge 

the right of teachers and prophets to fulfil their 

vocation. Jesus determined that, as they had 

lemma. 7 J 

publicly challenged him, they should as publicly 

demonstrate their capability of sitting in judgment on such cases. 

With that view he submitted to them a case well known to them, 

to him, and to the multitude who were listening — the case of John 

Baptist. Jesus said, " I also will ask of you one question, and 

answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 

The baptism of John — was it from heaven, or from men ? Answer 

me ! " All the people knew John ; so did the Sanhedrim. 



THE THIRD DAT. 



563 



It was a sudden question in the field of theocratic investigation. 
They saw the dilemma, and held a short private consultation.* 
Jesus silently awaited their answer. The multi- 
tude were too deeply interested to disperse. The 
Sanhedrim had only two courses from which to elect, to retire and 
leave the field to Jesus, or shape some reply. It was a question 
which demanded a categorical answer. Should it be " from hea- 
ven," they knew Jesus would reply, " Why then did you not be- 
lieve him 1 " and they recollected that John had borne the most 
emphatic testimony to Jesus. They would thus acknowledge 
John, whom they had rejected ; but if they did so, it would deprive 
them of all prestige and influence in judging Jesus. " The 
Church " weighed consequences, not truth ; that is the fashion of 
" The Church " in every land, in all ages. But if they should say 
" of men," deciding that John had no authority from heaven, that 
his was a self-assumed office, in which he was sustained by his 
partisans, who also were without divine authority, then they feared 
that the people would stone them, for the multitude held John to 
be a. prophet. 

There was uo escape. They saw it, and returned to Jesus with 
the statement, " We do not know." And Jesus said to them, 
" Neither do I tell } t ou by what authority I do these things." If 
they were not able to determine from the whole ministry of John, 
which was now completed, whether he had God's favor or not, 
still less were they able to judge Jesus in the midst of this excite- 
ment. Their discomfiture was complete. They acknowledged 
their inability to exercise the functions of the highest office in a 
theocracy, which office they were ostentatiously parading, and the 
dignity, the authority, and the power of which they had brought 
forth to crush Jesus. He appealed from the highest church tri- 
bunal to the private judgment of mankind, and is sustained wher- 
ever there are candid judges. 

He then poured in upon these pretentious churchmen a raking 
broadside of parables. 

In further reply he said, " But what think ye ? A man had two 
children : and he came to the first and said, ' Child, go work to- 



* For the report of this consultation 
we are probably indebted to Mcodemus, 
who was a member of the Sandedrim, 
and a private friend to the disciples of 



Jesus, to whom he probably communi- 
cated what had passed in this consulta- 
tion. 



564 THE LAST WEEK. 

day in the vineyard.' And he answering, said, f I will not.' 

Afterwards, having repented, he went. And he came* to the other, 

and said likewise. And he answering, said, ' I go, 

Parable of the . „ ^ went nQt Which of ^ twQ did ^ 
Two Sons. 

will of his father ? " They answered, " The 

first." Jesus said to them, " The tax-gatherers and the harlots go 
into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in 
the way of righteousness, and you believed him not ; but the tax- 
gatherers and the harlots believed him ; but you, when you had 
seen, repented not afterward, that you might believe him." 

This was exceedingly severe. These churchmen had expressed 
a willingness to serve God, as had been shown in their high moral 
professions and pretensions of legal righteousness. John came an 
earnest preacher of that very kind of righteousness, urging that it 
be done from the heart toward God. The scribes and Pharisees 
phowed their insincerity by rejecting just such a preacher as it is 
evident they would have hailed with joy, if they had not been 
hypocrites. And when God set the seal of His sanction by the 
conversion of the worst class of men and women in the commu- 
nity, even then the church authorities rejected him who bore the 
credentials of the heavenly Father's approval of his ministry. 
So perverse was their hypocrisy, that when the most convincing 
proofs of their error came, they refused to repent of the original 
rejection of John. 

In general two classes of sinners are here represented, as in 
the parable of the Prodigal Son, the one at first outbreaking, yet 
afterward repentant and obedient, the other pretending to obedi- 
ence, going the full length of obedience in speech, while disobe- 
dient at heart and in action. Publicans and harlots are the 
former, hypocrites and churchmen are the latter. 

Jesus continues his pungent appeal to the consciences of his 
adversaries. He said : " Hear another parable : A man, a house- 
holder, planted a vineyard, and made a hedge 

Parable of the about it and di2; ed a w i ne -trough, and built a 
Wicked Husband- 
mSirL tower, and let it out to farmers, and went abroad. 

And at the season of fruit he sent a slave to the 

farmers, that he might receive from the farmers [his share] of 

the fruits of the vineyard. And [the farmers] having caught 

him, beat and sent him away with nothing. And again he sent 

to them another : and him they wounded in the head and dishon- 



THE THIRD DAT. 565 

ored. And again he sent another, and that one they killed ; and 
many others, beating some and killing some. He had yet one be- 
loved son. He sent him at last to them, saying, ' They will rever 
ence my son.' But these farmers said among themselves, ' This 
is the heir ; come, let ns kill him, and the inheritance will be 
ours.' And they took and killed him, and cast him out of the 
vineyard." 

Then Jesus put the question : " When, then, the lord of the vine- 
yard shall come what shall he do to these farmers ? " From some 
one burst forth the reply : " He will miserably destroy those 
wicked men and let out the vineyard to other farmers, who shall 
render him the fruits in their season." Some one present ex- 
claimed : " Be it not so ! " or, as the passage stands in our com- 
mon version, " God forbid." Quoting Psalm cxviii. 22, Jesus said : 
" Have you not read this Scripture : ' A stone which the builders 
rejected the same became a head of a corner; from the Lord this 
came, and is wonderful to our eyes % ' " 

The chief priests and Pharisees felt the keenness of the speech 
against their principles and practices. They were not able to an- 
swer him, and therefore sought to silence by killing him, a thing 
they had already decreed to do. They were deterred only by a 
fear of the people, whose enthusiasm for Jesus was still easily ex- 
cited. 

Jesus went forward with his parables, so searching and so in- 
structive. He said to them : " The kingdom of the heavens is 
likened to a man, a king, who made wedding- 
feasts for his son, and sent forth his slaves to call . ParaUe •" Ma *- 
those who had been invited to the wedding-feast ; Son 
and they did not wish to come. Again he sent 
other slaves, saying : ' Tell those who have been invited, Behold I 
have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, 
and all things are ready : come to the feast.' But they, making 
light of it, went away, one to his farm, another to his merchan- 
dise. And the rest, having seized his servants, insulted and slew 
them. And the king was enraged, and having sent his armies he 
destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then says he 
to his slaves : ' The wedding-feast is ready, but they who were in- 
vited were not worthy. Go you, therefore, to the outlets [the 
roads leading out into the country], and as many as you find call 
to the wedding-feast.' So, going out into the roads, those slaves 



566 



THE LAST WEEK. 



The heavenly 
Miigdom. 



gathered all whom they found, both bad and good, and the bride- 
chamber was fully furnished with guests. And the king, coming 
in to view the guests, saw there a man who had not on a wedding 
garment ; and he says to him : ' Friend, how did you come iu 
here, not having a wedding-garment ? ' And he was speechless. 
Then the king said to his servants : ' Having bound his feet and 
hands, cast him into the darkness which is without ; there shall be 
the weeping and gnashing of teeth : for many are called, but few 
chosen. " 

This seems to be an enlarged repetition of a parable uttered 
earlier in his ministry in the house of the Pharisee. (See p. 485.) 
That such a Teacher as Jesus often repeated his teachings is what 
may reasonably be supposed. 

He represents the heavenly kingdom in the light of a festivity, 
combining the two images under which the prophets were fond of 
painting the reign of the Messiah, namely, a 
feast and a wedding.* Here it is a feast given 
by a king on a special high oceasion,f the mar- 
riage of his son. Invitations are issued to great numbers of per- 
sons. In accordance with Oriental custom, at the time specified 
the second invitation is issued. An instance of this appears in 
the invitation of Esther to Haman to come to a banquet on the 
morrow, and the sending a chamberlain at the appointed hour to 
bring him to the feast. (Compare Esther v. 8, with vi. 14.) The 
subjects of this king had been entertaining feelings of rebellion 
against him, and now that they were able to insult him through 
his messengers, they did not let the occasion pass. Some treated 
the invitation with contempt, going, one to his estate, which he 
had already acquired, and another to the business which he hoped 
would enrich him, showing how they preferred their private inter- 
ests to the will and pleasure of their sovereign. Others, wrought 
up to rebellion, went so far as to kill the messengers of their king. 
The Pharisees saw in all this that Jesus meant to present a pic- 
torial history of the rebellious Jews, and felt that he was severe 
on them. But then he began to speak prophetically by describing 
the burning of the city by the enraged king. Could he be 



80 



audacious as to mean Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, that that top- 



* Compare Isaiah xxv. 6, lxv. 13 ; 
Cant. v. 1, with Isaiah lxi. 10, lxii. 5, 
and Hosea ii. 19. 



f Hochzeit, high-time, in Germany, 
still means a marriage -feast. 



THE THIRD DAY. 



567 



Without the 

wedding-gar- 
ment. 



most of cities should be so destroyed \ It really seemed so. And 
if this festival was the good time of the Messianic reign, did he 
mean that the Jews were to be destroyed and the Gentiles 
brought in ? It really seemed so. After the destruction of the 
city the servants were ordered to go into the " outlets," where the 
streets ran into the country,* and bring in the outsiders. Jesus 
thus added fuel to the flame of the wrath of his enemies. 

But another lesson is made from this narrative. When the 
house became crowded the king went in to survey the guests, and 
found a man without the wedding-garment. He 
addressed him in language at once gentle and 
searching. Re called him " friend :" but in the 
Greek the " not having " is put in a word 
which suggests not simply the absence of the wedding-dress, but 
some defect in the behavior of the guest in allowing himself to be 
present without such a dress.f The speechlessness of the guest 
indicates that he had not even a specious apology to offer. The 
narrative assumes that garments w T ere at the guest's command, 
and therefore that the king himself had provided them. There 
seems to be no trace of such a custom exactly in this form, but 
we do know that splendid garments were reckoned among the 
treasures of Eastern chieftains and kings ; that some of them pos- 
sessed immense numbers of robes ; that the gift of costly raiment 
was a mark of honor ; and that a mantle presented by a king was 
to be worn in his presence, and that a failure to appear therein 
was considered offensive.:): In addition to what we read in the Old 
Testament, Horace § tells us that Lucullus found in his wardrobe 
not less than five thousand mantles. The fashions did not change 
as with us, and a man of wealth might accumulate and preserve 



* Trench guards his readers against 
being misled by the English word 
*' highways," as if this referred to the 
country, whereas the whole scene is 
represented as lying in a city. But 
this usually accurate and learned writ- 
er seems to have forgotten that the 
city is represented to have been burned 
before those servants go out into the 
highways. The original Greek word 
means outways as well as through- 
ways. 

f We are indebted to Trench for call- 



ing attention to the fact ' s that it is the 
subjective and not the objective particle of 
negation, which is here used." Ov tx wv 
signifies not having, without being con- 
scious of tbe absence of anything, or 
the necessity of its being present ; ytiij 
€%<av signifies intentional, not having 
what one knows one should have. 

% In illustration of these points read 
Judges xiv. 12 ; .Tobxxvii. 16 ; Gen. xlv. 
22 ; 2 Kings v. 5 ; 2 Chron. ix. 24 ; Matt, 
vi. 19 ; Acts xx. 33 ; James v. 1, 2. 

% Episi., I 6, 40. 



568 



THE LAST WEEK* 



Wilful 
thiness. 



an immense wardrobe. The customs of the East are so change- 
less, that we find the same state of affairs to-day. A modern 
writer, Chardin, acknowledged to be unusually well-informed and 
accurate, says of the King of Persia : " The number of dresses he 
gives away is infinite." * The same writer tells of a vizier who 
lost his life from failing to wear a garment which had been sent 
him by the king. He tells us that the officer through whose hands 
the robe from the king was to be sent, out of spite forwarded a 
plain dress instead. The vizier thought that if he appeared in 
that it would announce that he was in disgrace at court, and so 
made his public entry in a robe presented by the late king. His 
enemies represented to the monarch that his minister had refused 
to wear his gift, which so incensed him that he ordered the vizier 
to be executed. f 

The whole picture in the parable is in accord with Oriental cus- 
toms, and represents the punishment of wilful unworthiness. The 
guest was willing to have the good of the feast, 
if he could enjoy it in his own way and on his 
own terms, which were derogatory to the honor 
of the king and injurious to the pleasure of the other guests. He 
was a bold, perhaps a desperate, intruder. He who could dare 
enter the banqueting saloon of his king in such a shameful style 
might offer resistance, as the Jews showed when they were about 
to be ejected from a position which they were not worthy to main- 
tain. But resistance would be ineffectual. He was to be bound, 
and forced out, and left in the dark. If weak, he would wail ; 
if strongly passionate, he would gnash his teeth. The Marriage 
Feast is a sifting process. So God sifts and sifts. Only those 
who are willing to partake of the joys of the universe, and will- 
ing to take them in the way of God's appointing, a way intended 
to heighten the individual and the general joy, — only such shall 
remain in the high feasts of the kingdom of the heavens. 

Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how they might en- 
tangle Jesus in his talk. And they watched him, and sent to him 
a company of spies made up of their own sect 
Conspiracy. and of ^ ii erodians< The latter represented a 

political party, whose highest hope was in the continuance of the 



en Perse, vol. iii., p. 230. 
His words are : " Le nombre des hab- 
its qu'il donne est infini." 



f For the manner in which the rejec- 
tion of a monarch's gift was resented, 
see Herodotus, i. 9, c. 3. 



THE THIRD DAY. 569 

rule of the Herodian family. They were the special adherents 
of Herod Antipas, and perhaps personal attendants npon that 
tetrarch, who, we learn from Luke xxiii. 7, happened to be pres- 
ent at this Passover. That dynasty was a compromise between 
total national independence, of which this party of the Jews were 
in despair, and direct Roman rule, which was to the minds of the 
Jews the extreme of political degradation. The Herodian s did 
not represent a theological or ecclesiastical sect, but a political 
party. The Sadducees, although they were unorthodox material- 
ists, desired to maintain the ancient faith against pagan forms of 
civilization ; and the Pharisees, who were the orthodox religionists, 
preferred the domestic tyranny of the family of Herod the Great, 
who were nominally orthodox Jews, to the presence and rule of 
some heathen appointee of the Roman emperor. It thus hap- 
pened that sometimes the Pharisees, and at other times the Sad- 
ducees, are found in close fellowship with the Herodians ; but the 
basis of the fellowship was political and not religious. 

It is to be observed that all these parties had the most intense 
bitterness of hatred towards Rome, and that makes their conduct 
on this occasion the more vile, because, since Jesus cannot be 
forced to take the role of a political Messiah, they determine, if 
possible, to involve him in the fate which would have come upon 
any man who attempted that perilous part and failed. Or per- 
haps the intention was to drive him into taking the headship of a 
rebellion against Rome, and thus realize their political hopes,^or 
crush him out of their way as the social rulers of the people. 
When priests and politicians combine there is the culmination of 
human villany. 

With these malicious feelings they sent a body of, probably, 
young men of both parties, who should now go to him as private 
persons, as orthodox Jews, as devoted to the the- 
ocracy, as scrupulous men, who were to propound Attempt to en- 

,t . • . n • . snare J esus. 

to Jesus an ensnaring question, as if it were sim- 
ply one which was troubling their consciences. The historian 
says (Luke xx.), "who should feign themselves to be just men, 
that they might take hold of his conversation, so that they might 
deliver him to the power and authority of the governor." 

The manner of the approach was gracious, the style of the ad- 
dress was complimentary. They said, " Teacher, we know that 
you are true, and that you teach the way of God in truth, neither 



570 THE LAST WEEK. 

do you care for any one, for you do not look to the face of men." 
Guileful as were his enemies, they were compelled to give this 
■ faithful description of the character and teaching of Jesus. He 
was truthful because he was independent. He had demon- 
strated in his ministry of three years that he could not be moved 
by any appeal men could make to his hopes or to his fears. He 
was independent because he was righteous. All this was truth to 
which the people could bear witness ; but it was not uttered in the 
spirit of truth, and, while essentially and profoundly true in it- 
self, it was a lie on the lips of these tempters. 

The intent of this manner of address is quite obvious. It was 
* an attempt to cozen Jesus. It was a movement to excite him into 
■%ueh a feeling of superiority that he should dare utter what would 
' bear a treasonable interpretation, which the Herodians would re- 
port, and to which the Pharisees, as impartial and unpolitical per- 
sons, would bear testimony. 

The question was one of marvellous adroitness. It seemed to 
demand a categorical answer, " yes " or " no," or enforced silence. 
It was this: "Tell us, then, what you think : is it 
. ^ adroit ques - lawful to give tribute to Csesar or not ? " If he 
said, " Yes, it is lawful," he would shock the Jew- 
ish prejudices of the populace. He would be charged with in- 
culcating a humiliating submission to a heathen conqueror. He 
v would disparage his claims to the Messiahship. It would be out- 
rageous that the theocratic king of the Jews should teach submis- 
sion to a heathen oppressor of his own people. An affirmative 
answer would thus destroy his present popularity and his prospects 
of future advancement. If he said, " No, it is not lawful," there 
would be ground on which to rest an accusation of rebellion. 
It might be a speech to pass without notice if uttered by some 
bigoted rustic in a Jewish village, but spoken by a very popular 
Teacher at the high festival, in the metropolis, and in the Tem- 
t pie of his nation, it becomes altogether another thing. Home 
would not pass lightly by such a speech of such a man under such 
circumstances. These conspirators supposed that he must say 
" yes " or " no," and perhaps it occurred to them that if for any 
reason Jesus should see fit to decline an answer, this would put 
him just where he had placed them by his dilemma in regard to 
John the Baptist, and that thus they should recover the ground 
they had lost in that conflict. 



THE THIRD DAT. 



571 



But Jesus neither kept silence nor gave a categorical reply. 
He read them through and through. He upbraided them for 

their dissimulation. "Why do you 
tempt me, you hypocrites ? " And 
then he turned upon them with a 
most unexpected movement. " Show 
me the coin of the tribute," he said, 
and they brought him a denarius, the 
common silver coin of the Empire then in circulation in Palestine, 
being the ordinary pay for a day's labor. He held the piece of 
money in his hand and asked — not that he did not know, but 
manifestly that their own lips should speak it — " Whose is this 
image and superscription % " They answered, " Caesar's." His 
reply was like a flash of inspiration, " Render therefore Caesar's 




AUGUSTUS C^SAR. 



things to Caesar, 



and God's things to God ! " 



The net torn. 



Was there ever anything fairer ? The net was torn to pieces. 
All morality, all piety, and all the companionship of the numer- 
ous duties were put into eleven Greek words, which 
require only the same number of English words 
to translate them. All personal devotioi \ t< > God, all j ustice towards 
man, all equipoise of character were set forth in a sentence which 
can be pronounced in a breath. They had accepted money from 
Caesar's mint, thus acknowledging the dominion of the Emperor ; 
thus they had settled against themselves in practical every-day 
life, the question which one of their schools had determined in 
the rabbinical rule, " The coin of the country shows the master." * 

Jesus thus gave a summary of his teaching in an answer the 
most profound, because it states what underlies all life and all the 
duties thereof; the most lofty, because it crowns 
the highest hopes of man for this present life, and 
his grandest for the life to come ; the most beauti- 
ful, because in it law and freedom kiss each other; the most power- 
ful, because it holds despotism and anarchy apart, and holds 
religion and progressive free life together. No other one sentence 
uttered among men has done so much for the progress of human 
society. It was not a divorcing of religion from government, and 
a putting of God out of the affairs of the nations, as if human 



A profound lea • 
son. 



* Ellicott quotes Maimonides in Ge- 
tdao" chap v. : " Ubicunque numisma 
regis alicujus obtinet, illic incolae regem 



istum pro domino agnoscunt. " See also 
Lightfoot, Hot. Eeb., in Matt. xxii. 2a 



572 THE LAST WEEK. 

government and divine rule stood at neutrality or in antagonism. 
Nor was it a sanction of Jewish ideas of unity, as if service to an 
earthly monarch were treason to God, as under their theocracy 
they had grown to believe, since God was king. Caesar exists by 
appointment of God. Government does not exist by the will 
of the governed, nor by the will of the governor, but by the ordi- 
nance of God. Men dare not be without government ; nor is it 
practicable if men should attempt it. Duty to the government is 
best discharged by devotion to God ; and duty to God involves the 
discharge of obligations to the government. These hypocrites and 
liars who were tempting Jesus were like all the disciples of the 
" higher law " school in every age, making their pretended piety 
an excuse for a violation of civil obligations. They were willing 
to serve neither God nor Caesar, pleading one against the other that 
they might be free from both. But Jesus, instead of admitting 
the alternative of Caesar or God, assumes and impresses the con- 
nection of Caesar and God. 

Perhaps the idea that Jesus intended to convey a lesson by the 
allusion to the image on the coin is not without foundation. It has 
obtained in all Christian ages. Man bears God's image in his 
soul from the birth, and is a man because he does bear that image, 
as a piece of silver is a coin because it bears the image of the 
reigning prince. Eender your inner spiritual life to God and 
devote your outer worldly life to your country, might seem to be 
the lesson for each individual. In any case there is no collision of 
duties. 

When the Pharisees and Herodians heard the saying of Jesus 
they marvelled at the wisdom of his reply, and seeing that they 
could not take hold of his words before the people, they held their 
peace and left him, and went their way. \ 

But their pursuit of Jesus was not to be thus abandoned. If he 
cannot be caught by an adroit question regarding political princi- 
ples, perhaps he can be betrayed into saying some- 

The pursuit not ^ j n g wn ich shall rouse against him the adherents 
of one of the sects among the people. To that 
end the Sadducees approached him ; and they had a question so 
shaped that any answer they could conceive would either commit 
him against the law of Moses or drive him into the helplessness of 
silence. Jesus had endorsed the law of Moses, and had also 
explicitly taught the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. 



THE THIRD DAY. 573 

The Sadducees were materialistic pantheists. They did not 
believe in any spirit, whether of man, angel, or God. They did 
not believe in the resurrection of the body, and therefore, as the 
body was all there was of man, the continued existence of con- 
scious personal identity was not received by them. They ran their 
principles to the logical ends of atheism or pantheism. In out- 
ward life they were decent, and considered themselves a part of 
the " church," and, so far as we can see, were not debarred by their 
philosophical tenets from being members of the Sanhedrim. For 
political reasons they were ready to join the Pharisees and the 
Herodians — indeed some of the sect may have been Herodians — 
in putting aside a man whose course threatened to bring the Jews 
into collision with the Romans without the prospect of making a 
successful revolt against the dominant empire. 

The Sadducees plant themselves on Moses and quote the law of' 
the Levirate marriage, thus : " Teacher, Moses said, If any one 
die, having no children, his brother shall marry his 
wife and raise up seed to his brother. But there a ^ e stion b 7 ^e 
were with us seven brothers ; and the first, having 
married, died, and not having seed he left his wife to his brother. 
Likewise the second also, and the third, until the seventh. And 
last of all the woman died. Now in the resurrection of which of 
the seven shall she be wife?" From their standiug-point this 
seems like a difficulty from which Jesus cannot extricate himself. 
He must admit that their statement of the law, being a free render- 
ing of Deuteronomy xxv. 5, is quite correct. Then they state a 
case. Whether it occurred in real life or is imagined in order to 
test the principle, is not important. It might occur. It would 
have been sufficient to take the very case which Moses supposed, 
namely, of two brothers ; but the greater the number the greater 
the perplexity, and therefore they state seven. It is clear that 
they suppose that Moses did not believe in the resurrection, and 
the question which they state involves, as they think, in any reply 
which Jesus can make, a surrender of the truth of the doctrine 
of the resurrection, or of the binding force of the law of Mose?, 
It is quite clear that they did not propound the question that they 
might be enlightened. It was to entangle Jesus. 

The reply of Jesus was lofty in its spirit and demolishing in its 
stroke. He did not deign a reply to a sneer at a great doctrine, 
nor a solution specially applicable to a case sensually conceived 



574 THE LAST WEEK. 

and coarsely stated. He showed their folly and stated the great 
principle involved in the case, and demonstrated by a single quota- 
tion from the writings of Moses that the great law- 
sus - giver was neither pantheist nor Sadducee. His 
reply is, " You are wandering, knowing neither the Scriptures nor 
the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor 
are given in marriage, but as the angels of God in heaven are 
they. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not 
known precisely that spoken to you by God, saying, ' I am the God 
of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob?' He is not 
the God of the dead, but the God of the living." 

He rejects their pantheistic notions, asserts the personality of 

God, teaches that those of whom Jehovah is God cannot be dead, 

but alive. God is ; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 

esus against ar& ^ ^ggg men are d ea0 \ so far as the world is 

pantheism. 

able to perceive ; but they are as certainly alive as 
God is. He answers their quotation from Moses of the provision 
for Levirate marriages, by showing them, by another quotation 
from Moses (Exod. iii. 6), how the belief in the continued exist- 
ence of men after death underlay the highest teachings of the 
great lawgiver. He gives them to understand that their question, 
which was propounded in the spirit of libertinism, involved a 
gross error, which came of their ignorance of both the meaning of 
Scripture and the power of God. It does not seem that Jesus 
charged the Sadducees with being ignorant of the omnipotence of 
God, but that they did not discern the power of God in holy 
Scripture ; that to them a writing was a writing, and nothing more ; 
in short, that they did not know that the fact of the power of God 
being in the Scripture was a proof that God is a spirit. 

The marriage relation is one of the natural and not of the spir- 
itual body. This forced Levirate marriage was most unnatural. 
Whether any love existed between the widow and 
rai her brother-in-law, whether or not she loved an- 

other man better, or he had already a wife whom 
he loved, his brother's widow must be taken to his arms. The 
whole arrangement was made for the preservation of the family. 
There should be no need for any such regulation in the world 
which men enter at death. There the men do not marry, and 
women are not married. If sex remain, there is nothing which 
demands such unions as we have on earth ; so then the case which 



THE THIRD DAY. 575 

the Sadducees cited as conclusive really had no bearing whatever 
on the question under discussion. The Sadducees did not see far 
enough to perceive that human beings may exist in two states 
successively, without losing their identity ; while we, who are in 
one of those states, do not see how arrangements of the other can 
at all correspond with this. A priori, it would be reasonable to 
suppose that we could not see this connexion, and that any diffi- 
culty proposed would amount simply to an acknowledgment of 
our ignorance, and no proof of any other proposition whatever. 
That is what Jesus implies. You are in error ; your error is the 
result of your ignorance ; but your ignorance can have no effect 
upon the facts of God and of eternity. 

The reply of Jesus silenced the Sadducees and excited the 
admiration of the multitude, and even some of the better-minded 
Pharisees, according to Luke, exclaimed : " Well said ! " so de- 
lighted were they with the reply. 

One of them, a lawyer, came forward Avith a question to Jesus. 
The term " lawyer," z/o/u/eo?, so frequent in the Evangelists, must 
be understood to mean one who devoted himself 
to the study and exposition of the Mosaic law, a Th * law 7 er ' a 

. . question. 

biblical scholar, a Doctor of Divinity, rather than 
one practising in the courts of civil and criminal law. We are 
not quite sure as to the spirit which prompted this question. The 
Pharisees were undoubtedly elated that Jesus had silenced the 
Sadducees. They might have felt that now was the time to show 
their superiority by proposing a good question, implying they 
were not concerned in things so gross as those which occupied the 
Sadducees. Or this lawyer may have personally desired to know 
what was the opinion of this Teacher upon a question which was 
one of great interest in the schools of the Pharisees. Or the 
Pharisaic party may have wished to make him repeat the com- 
mand which asserted the great doctrine of monotheism, from 
which they argued, as Mohammed has subsequently, that God 
could have no son, and to reflect it upon the claim which Jesus 
had made of being the Son of God in an exceptional sense. 

These suppositions are suggested by the question itself, by the 
answer of Jesus, and by the counter-question which followed. 

The lawyer asked, " Of what nature is the first commandment 
of all % " This is strictly the meaning of the question, and not, as 
in the common version of Mark, " Which is the first \ " and of 



576 THE LAST WEEK. 

Matthew, "Which is the great commandment?" The legal 
spirit had taken such possession of the Jews that they enumer- 
ated, says Braune, 365 prohibitions, according to 

mandmenT COm ~ ^ e days °f tne vear ? and 228 commandments, 
according to the parts of the body. The Pharisees 
distinguished between light and heavy, great and small laws. 
They regarded them quantitively. Each command in the deca- 
logue had its adherents. There was no danger in any selection 
Jesus might make. But the point of peril lay here : if he said, 
as was most probable from his character and teaching, that the 
first commandment, " Thou shalt have no other God before me," 
contained the principle of supreme love £o God, his answer would 
make the basis for a charge of blasphemy. In the original it is 
irota, " what hind of a law," what is the spirit and principle of 
the chief law. We shall see that the two counts against Jesus at* 
last were political aspiration and blasphemy, into both which his 
adversaries had endeavored to force him ; and having failed of 
the first they are still trying the second. 

Jesus answered, " The first is, Hear, Israel ; the Lord our 
God is one Lord ; and you shall love the Lord your God with all 
your heart, and all your soul, and all your intel- 
rep y Iqq^ and all your strength. This is the first and 
great command. The second is like it, this : You 
shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is not any other 
commandment greater than these ; on these two commandments 
depend the law and the prophets." It will be perceived that as 
he had foiled their efforts to make him compromise himself 
politically, so now, from any involvement in blasphemy, which 
would have been caused by a surrender of the claims he had al- 
ready made, especially if accompanied by an assertion of the debt 
of supreme love to God alone, Jesus saves himself, by adding imme- 
diately after the first command the second, and saying that it was 
like the first, and then conjoining them and declaring that on the 
two w T as suspended all that the law and the prophets contained. 
It was bringing together what God had joined and man had sepa- 
rated, namely, God and man, heaven and earth. It was a decla- 
ration that all the morality of the law, and the religious faith and 
fervor of the prophets, lay in loving God up to the full measure 
of human capability, and loving one's fellow-man up to the full 
measure of a healthy and natural self-love which has not run 



THE THIED DAY. 577 

to selfishness. The reply was simple, comprehensive, and sub- 
lime. 

The scribe felt it. He exclaimed, " Well, Teacher, you have 
spoken the truth. One He is : and there is not another besides 
Ilim. And to love Him with all your heart, and all your under- 
standing, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as your- 
self, is more than all the whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices." 
This gushing expression of belief seemed to please Jesus, who 
said to him, " You are not far from the kingdom of God." This 
is an important sentence. It lets us into the knowledge of the 
meaning of Jesus when he speaks of " the kingdom of God," 
which he makes synonymous with " the kingdom of the heavens." 
An apprehension of the spiritual meaning of the laws of God, of 
the abstract essence which is independent of the concrete forms 
of right, and on which those concrete forms themselves depend, is 
the beginning of the comprehension of a kingdom whose existence 
does not rest upon matter as a foundation, nor grow out of 
matter as a root, a kingdom which is itself the substance of all 
visible things. The things that are seen are to be known thor- 
oughly only as understood in their connection with the things that 
are not seen. The former 0#ist from the latter, and the latter 
sulsht for the former. That is the fundamental principle of all 
the teachings of Jesus, and so indispensable did he consider it that 
he regarded his whole mission of teaching as embraced in the work 
of preaching that kingdom. 

While the Pharisees were collected together, Jesus in Ids turn 
began to propound questions. He had upset all their traps and 
silenced all their cavils. He turned upon them 
with the question: "How does it seem to you question 
about the Christ ? Whose son is he ? " They 
were scandalized because Jesus had claimed to be the Son of 
God, since God could have no son, in their opinion. But they 
were looking for the Messiah, that is the Christ, that is the 
Anointed Deliverer. Now He must be some one's son. Whose ? 
" David's," was their reply. Jesus said : " In what sense, then, 
did David, by the Holy Spirit, call him Lord, saying, ' The Lord 
said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand, until I put your ene- 
mies under your feet? If, then, David calls him Lord, in what 
sense is he his son \ " 

The tranquillity of Jesus, his serene self-possession, after the 
37 



578 



THE LAST WEEK. 



badgering through which his unscrupulous and malicious enemies 
had carried him, must occur to every reader of the narrative. 
The original historians do not point it out, in- 
The Evangelists deed th a l mos t entirely avoid characterization, 
avoid characten- • #• • 

zat ion. narrating facts and sayings, apparently innocent 

of all their highest connections. And yet there 
are those connections. Jesus had been hailed by the people as 
Messiah ; he was in the Temple acting as Messiah ; he turned the 
conversation with his enemies into a discussion of the Messiah. 
Let the reader go back to the account of the first visit of Jesus 
to the Temple after his circumcision, and recollect the question 
which the boy of twelve years propounded to his mother when 
she was concerned at his being separated from her company : 
" Do you not know that I must be about my Father's business ? " 
in a special manner claiming God for his father, and the affairs 
of the Temple the business in which he should be engaged. 
(Luke ii. 49, 50.) 

Now he confounds their pertinacity and instructs their igno- 
rance at the same time. He quotes the first verse of Psalm ex., 

_ .,; a psalm the Jews in the time of Jesus univer- 

David s Son and * .. _ _ . . „ _. .. 

David's Lord sa *v interpreted as Messianic* J- hey do not 

deny that this is a prophecy of the Messiah, 

Christ. But the Pharisees in their teaching had entirely lost 



* The Jews never denied the Mes- 
sianic application of this psalm before 
the days of Jesus, and his argument 
came upon them so suddenly that they 
did not think of dodging his blow by 
making the denial then. Indeed, as I 
euggest in the text, they would not 
have dared to face the people with such 
a denial. Better take the blow of Je- 
sus than outrage the feelings of the 
multitude by denying what had always 
been taught and believed. But after- 
ward, when Christians pushed this ar- 
gument of Jesus, and when it ceased to 
be dangerous, they denied the Messianic 
applicability of the psalm. Justin Mar- 
tyr (Dialog, cont. Tryph.) and Ter- 
tullian (Adv. Marcion) mention the ex- 
planation which makes Hezekiah the 
subject as common among the Jews of 



that day. Chrysostom found in his day 
a great diversity of opinions among the 
Jews. It was applied to Abraham, 
Zerubbabel, Hezekiah, the Jewish peo- 
ple, etc. But there was not the slight- 
est difference of opinion among the 
Jews before the day when Jesus pre- 
sented his argument in the Temple. 
Then it became evident that if the Mes- 
sianic interpretation be adhered to, the 
charge of blasphemy against Jesus was 
absurd, and his execution for blasphemy 
was a murder of most outrageous char- 
acter. The reader, if he can consult 
the books, will find this historical state- 
ment verified by Hengstenberg, Chris- 
tol., i. vol.; Michaelis, Annot on Uagio* 
graph. , i. vol. ; and Wetstein on Matt 
xxii. 44. 



THE THIRD DAY. 579 

eight of the spiritual character of the Messiah. They had come 
to regard him merely as a man, chosen by the Almighty to be 
Messiah, Christ, because of his surpassing virtue. They could 
not see the possibility of any one being superior to themselves, as 
they were in the succession of the regularly appointed teachers oi 
the Scriptures, still less could they understand that any one should 
be superior to David. The term Messiah, Christ, Anointed, given 
in words from three languages, but meaning the same thing, was 
originally applied to all Hebrew kings and chief magistrates, as 
Arsaces was among the Persians, Pharaoh among -the Egyptians, 
and (Jiesar among the Romans. But in process of thought and 
of time it came to be associated with the One looked-for Deliv- 
erer of the nation. This man should be of the lineage of David. 
It was easy to say he was David's son, and in one sense it was not 
incorrect. But David, under the highest inspiration, as they be- 
lieved, said that Jehovah said to this Messiah : " Sit on my right 
hand until I put your enemies under your feet ; " and David calls 
this Messiah " My Lord." They had not thought of this before. 
On their theory they are confounded ; on the theory of Jesus all is 
plain. God could have a son, who should sit at his right, that is, 
share with Him the government of the world, and who at the 
same time could be a descendant of David. The same person 
could be Son of God and Son of Man, being Son of David. 

They could not deny that those words were in the Scriptures. 
They dared not say — whatever Sadducees might — that the words 
were not inspired, and they could not stultify 
themselves, and shock popular prejudice by sud- agaiu pe^exed. " 
denly denying what they themselves and all their 
predecessors had taught, namely, that that inspired splendid lyric 
referred to the Messiah. They were silenced. They asked Jesus 
no more questions. 

Then followed the last public discourse of Jesus to the Jews. 
It is exceedingly terrible. Turning to the multitude and to his 
disciples, he said : 

" Upon Moses's seat the scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves. 
Therefore all, whatever they shall say to you, do ; but do not according to 
their works, for they say, and do not. And they bind 
great heavy burdens, and lay them on the shoulders of The 'f t pubUc ^ 

«»■«'»«» course of Jesus. 

men ; but they will not move them with their finger. For 

all their works the^ do for to be seen of men; for they broaden their 



580 THE LAST WEEK. 

phylacteries and enlarge their fringes ; and they love the top- couches at feasts 
and the top-seats in the synagogues and the salutations in the market-places 
and to be called of men Rabbi. 

" But do not you be called Rabbi ; for one is your Leader, and you are all 
brethren. And call no one your father on the earth ; for one is your Father, 
the Heavenly : neither be you called leaders ; for one is your Leader, the 
Christ [Messiah]. But the greater of you shall be servant. A nd whosoever 
shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he who shall humble himself shall be 
exalted." * 

Then turning to the church party, he said : 

" Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye devour the 
houses of widows and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore you 
shall receive the greater condemnation. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites ! because ye shut the kingdom of the heavens in front of men, 
for you neither go in yourselves, nor allow those who are coming in to enter. 
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you go about sea and 
?and to make one proselyte, and when he becomes so you make him tenfold 
more a son of Gehenna than yourselves. Woe unto you, the blind guides, 
who say, 'Whosoever shall swear by the Temple, it is nothing ; but whosoever 
shall swear by the gold of the Temple, he is a debtor ! ' Fools and blind ! 
for which is greater, the gold, or the Temple which makes the gold holy 2 
And, ' If one shall swear by the altar, it is nothing ; but if any one swear by 
the gift that is on it, he is a debtor ! ' Blind ! for which is the greater, the 
gift, or the altar which makes the gift holy ? He, therefore, who swears by 
the altar, swears by it and by all things on it ; and he who swears by the Tem- 
ple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it ; and he who swears by heaven, 
swears by the throne of God, and by Him who sits upon it. 

" Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you tithe mint and 
anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judg- 
ment, mercy, and faith. These it was right to do, and not to leave the others 
undone. Blind guides ! straining out a gnat, swallowing a camel. 

" Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you cleanse the out- 
side of the cup and of the dish, but within they are full of rapacity and in- 
justice. Blind Pharisees ! cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the dish, 
that the outside of them may be clean also. 

" Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you are like to 
whited sepulchres, which outwardly indeed appear beautiful, but are within 
full of the bones of the dead and of all filth. Thus you also outwardly in- 
deed appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and law- 
lessness ! 

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you build the 
tombs of the prophets and ornament the monuments of the just, and say, 
If we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with 
them in the blood of the prophets. So that you testify to yourselves that you 
are the sons of the muiderers of the prophets, and you have filled up the 



THE THIRD DAY. 581 

measure of your fathers. Serpents, breed of vipers, how can you escape the 
judgment of Gehenna ? 

" On this account, see, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes, some 
of whom you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in 
your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city, that on you may come 
all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel 
to the blood of Zacharias, whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar. 
I assuredly say to you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! killing the prophets and stoning them that are 
sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as 
a hen gathers her chickens under her wings ; and you were not willing ! See ! 
your house is left to you desolate ! For, I say to you, You shall not see me 
from this time, till you shall say. Praised ~be he coming in the Lord's name! " 

This is a terrible speech. 

One is remanded to the Sermon on the Mount by various 
points of similarity and contrast. The main resemblance lies in 
this, that both are discourses on Character. 
One was delivered in the beginning, and the Q Com P ared *** 

, , , P , . . . & , i Sermon on the 

other at the end or his ministry, yet both set Mount 

forth the ruling doctrine of his life, nam el} 7 , that 
office is nothing, that profession is nothing, that internal spiritual 
character is everything. It will be perceived also that parts of 
the Sermon of the Mount, as well as parts of this Denunciatory 
Valedictory, were repeated at several stages of his ministry, so as 
to give a certain class of critics some ground for saying that both 
are collections, made by the art and insight of the Evangelist 
(Matthew), who grouped his teachings into something like ora- 
tions. But there is a terrible beauty of unity in this last fiery 
discourse, which, more than any argument of criticism, it seems 
to me, will make every reader feel that it was all delivered at 
once. Passages may have been, and doubtless were, uttered 
as occasion called them forth ; but here, in his Farewell to Juda- 
ism and Jerusalem, Jesus pours his soul in a full tide of grand 
and pure passion down the channel of a final discourse. 

Moreover, one perceives that the Sermon on the Mount is 
constructed upon the principle of describing, first, the essentials 
of a good character, and then the results in the open life ; while 
the Denunciatory Valedictory first describes a wrong outward 
life, and then traces these fruits to the sap of hypocrisy. It has 
also been noticed that the number of the woes in this case is 
equal to the number of benedictions in that, and some have made 



582 THE LAST "WEEK. 

a strict correspondence. While we may not be able to perceive 
that as closely as others, the analysis of this discourse will never- 
theless suggest it. 

The speech opens with some instructions to his disciples in the 

presence of the multitude. He advises them to do as the scribes 

and the Pharisees said, not as thev did. These 

Instruction. . , . _ ' . ■ *\, _ 

men had the seat or doctrinal authority. Bur- 
densome as were some of the regulations which they imposed on 
the people, in their public teachings they inculcated sound mo- 
rality. If the disciples of Jesus had set themselves in a revo- 
lutionary maimer against these teachers of the law there would 
have been public disorder, a worse thing than allowing these men 
to retain the seat they had taken, representing Moses in the 
teaching of the law. But their conduct was so wicked that no 
authority which they seemed to derive from their position was to 
give them such an influence over the disciples of Jesus, and the 
multitudes who heard him, as to lead them into imitating the 
example of these hypocrites, who covered the viciousness of their 
lives by laying heavy burdens on the shoulders of other men. 
Their whole life was a sham. They never did right because 
it was right and because it would be pleasing to God, but simply 
that they might enjoy the applause of men. Their life was 
a perpetual lie. That they might have the reputation of sanctity 
they made broad their phylacteries and fringes. 

In literal application of the figurative expressions of Exodus 
xiii. 9, 16, and Deuteronomy vi. 8, 9, that the law should be 

bound as frontlets between the eyes, the Phari- 
e p y ac ry. gees made what is called " the tepkilla on the 
head," and in the text and elsewhere called phylactery. These 
were strips of parchment on which, with an ink prepared for the 
purpose, were written four passages of Scripture, namely, Exodus 
xiii. 2-10, 11-17; Deuteronomy vi. 4-9, and 13-22. These 
strips were rolled up in a case of black calf-skin, which was 
attached to a stiffer piece of leather, having thongs, covered 
with Hebrew letters, which thongs being passed round the head 
and made into a knot in the shape of i, were passed over the 
breasts. Instead of writing the law of God on their memories 
and affections, as the Scriptures had taught them, these Phari- 
sees contented themselves with making a parade of their phy- 
lacteries. 



THE THIRD DAT. 



583 



In Numbers xv. 38, Jehovah commands the Israelites to " make 
them fringes [in Hebrew nS* 1 ^, tsitsitK] in the borders of their 
garments," and " that they put upon the fringe 
of the borders a ribbon of blue." The blue was 
the symbolical color of heaven and of God's faithfulness. It was 
much used in sacred things. The High-Priest's ephod, the loops 
of the curtains of the Tabernacle, the ribbons for the breastplate, 
and the ribbons for the plate of the mitre, were blue. Setting 
up these tsitsithim they were to remind themselves of their being 
children of the covenant, and that they were faithfully to keep the 
commandments of a God who on His part would be faithful to 
all His promises. Losing all memory of the spiritual meaning 
of the regulations, these hypocrites had learned to satisfy them- 
selves with an enlargement of the fringe on the garment in place 
of a deepening sentiment of humble piety in the soul. 

These men loved the chief place at feasts. Among the Greeks 
the seat of honor was the highest place on the divan, among the 
Persians and the Romans it was the middle 
place. The Pharisees loved also the highest 
places in the synagogues, and it gratified their vanity to be 
called Teacher, Doctor, Rabbi. Against these Jesus warned 
his disciples. They were not to love to be called Rabbi, a title 
which occurs in three forms, Rab, Teacher, Doctor ; Rabbi, 
My Doctor or Teacher ; Rabboni, My great Doctor. Nor were 
they to call any man " Father," in the sense of granting him any 
infallibility of judgment or power over their consciences. All 
the disciples of Jesus are of equal authority, all are brethren. 
" Papa," as the simple Moravians call their great man, Count Zin- 
zendorf ; " Founder," as Methodists denominate good John Wesley ; 
" Holy Father in God," as bishops are sometimes called ; " Pope," 
which is the same as "Papa;" "Doctor of Divinity," the Chris- 
tian equivalent of the Jewish " Rabbi," are all dangerous titles.* 



Rabbi." 



* It is contemptible in any minister 
of the G-ospel to seek the title of Doctor 
of Divinity. The solicitation of its be- 
stowal on himself proves the applicant 
unworthy. It is foolish and Pharisaic 
to reject it. No man can possibly prove 
to any other man that his rejection was 
not prompted by vanity. Probably no 
man yet has rejected it who was not 



known to his acquaintances to be, on 
other grounds, a very vain man. It is 
as Pharisaic to reject it as to seek it. 
No man for such a cause can plead thia 
teaching of Jesus in justification, be- 
cause the public rejection violates the 
spirit of this very precept. It says to 
the world, ' ' See : 1 am greater than 
these Doctors of Divinity ; I can afford 



584 



THE LAST WEEK. 



But it is not the employment of a name which Jesus de- 
nounces, it is the spirit of vanity which animated the Phari- 
sees, and the servile spirit which the employment of titles is 
apt to engender. Paul and Peter spoke of themselves as spiri- 
tual fathers.* Jesus teaches that positions in the societies of 
his followers, such as should afterward be formed, were not to 
be regarded as dignities, but rather as services; that no man 
should seek them for the honor they might confer, but for the 
field of usefulness they might afford; and that no man should 
lead off a sect, there being but one leader ; and that the whole 
body of believers are brethren, of whom God is the Father. 

Then he turned upon the Pharisees and exposed and de- 
nounced them. 

1. Opposed to that "poverty of spirit" which is the subject 
of the first benediction in the Sermon on the Mount, is a de- 
nunciation of that lie which pervaded the long 

First contrast ~ , , . * . . ° 

with the Sermon P ravers °* charity made by these sanctimonious 
Pharisees, while they were privately devouring 
the houses of defenceless widows. Even in their prayers they 
lied. They were not able to be honest at their devotions. 
And this is mentioned first, because it seems to be a key 
to the whole. If when a man approaches God in prayer he 
is a hypocrite, how can he be otherwise with his fellow-men ? 
To obtain the property of the helpless unrighteously is bad 
enough, but to commit this villany under the garb of piety is 
absolutely damnable. 

2. In the " Sermon," he had blessed mourners, encouraging all 
who are penitent, making their heartfelt grief a source of com- 
fort to them. But the Pharisees, being unchari- 
table and hypocritical at once, not only did not 

repent and prepare themselves for the kingdom of the heavens, 
but actually kept others from entering. They sat in the seat of 



Second contrast. 



to dispense with the title." The only- 
decent course is silence. But Christian 
colleges ought to be careful in the be- 
stowal of a title which so tests the 
Christianity of the recipient. Jesus 
teaches us that we ought not to love to 
be called by any names which seem to 
elevate us above our brethren. Mr., 
Master, might just as well be rejected 



as Dr., Teacher, for originally it meant 
the same; and it is much worse to 
allow one's self to be called " Rever- 
end " than to allow the title of Doctor. 
It is not courtesy which Jesus condemns, 
but vanity. 

* See 1 Cor. iv. 15 ; 1 Tim. i. 2; Ti- 
tus i. 4 ; 1 Peter v. 13. 



THE THIRD DAY. 585 

Moses. They should have been the teachers of a true spiritual 
religion. But, instead, when men showed any signs of a spir- 
itual awakening they repressed them, as they were trying to sup- 
press him who taught the highest spiritual truths. Their sitting 
at the door of knowledge as janitors was a lie, over which Jesus 
pronounced a " woe." 

3. Their position, however, demanded that they should do 
something. They spent their strength on proselyting. It was 
not to save souls ; it was not even to convert hea- 

. i . , T -ujt «j. j Third contrast. 

thens into Jews, nor even bad Jews into good 
Jews, but it was to add to the number of their sect. It was that 
same spirit which sometimes now seizes the sects of Christendom, 
making them proud of the growth of the " denomination," the 
" connection," " the church," or whatever else the sect may be 
called. It is opposed to that "meekness " which is the subject of 
the third benediction in " the Sermon." They were fierce and 
hot, like the Gehenna, the burning valley of Hinnom, and when 
they made a pervert he was doubly as bad as themselves, as per- 
verts, the world through, usually are. 

4. Jesus denounces their morality, which was a base casuistryj 
the very opposite of that " hungering and thirsting after right- 
eousness " which he had blessed in " the Ser- 
mon." They had gone blind on the simplest and 

plainest questions of morality. He gives a case. The oath by 
the Temple — " by this Dwelling " — was frequent. Sometimes it 
was by the Temple-treasure. The Pharisees distinguished be- 
tween the binding obligation of these oaths. The violation of the 
former was a trivial offence ; of the latter was a heinous crime. 
It was the foolish casuistry of those who set more store by the 
church than by the chapel or meeting-house, who forget the value 
of that which sanctifies, and think only of that which may be 
sanctified, as if building, ornaments, vestments, ceremonials, con- 
stitute the kingdom of the heavens. So of their other case : an 
oath by the gift on the altar is more binding than an oath by the 
altar itself. This folly would seem to be transparent to any men, 
if we did not know that learned " doctors " of the later a^es had 
not taught in the spirit which makes the rubric of a ritual more 
important than an enactment of the Decalogue. Their whole 
system of ethics was rotten, and Jesus cursed it. 

5. And then he pronounced a woe over their hypocrisy in what 



586 



THE LAST WEEK. 



they would have considered their devotion to religion. The iav? 
of tithes, as set forth in Levit. xxvii. 30 ; Numb, xviii. 21 ; Dent. 
Fifth t t x ^' ^ > an( ^ x * v * ^~28, embraced only the grain that 
grew in their fields and the fruits that grew in 
their orchards. But the schools had applied the rule to the smallest 
product of the garden. With scrupulous exactness the Pharisees 
paid these. Jesus does not intimate that they defrauded the Tem- 
ple treasury ; but their sin lay in devoting themselves to outward 
goodness of behavior and neglecting justice, mercy, and fidelity. It 
is common for men who never suspect themselves of being Phari- 
sees, to fancy themselves just in character because they are scru- 
pulous upon some one right point of practice. It is the spirit of 
justice that is required, that justice which dwells with fidelity and 
mercy, that mercy on which he had pronounced the fifth benedic- 
tion in the " Sermon." Of what avail their tithes, their outward 
strict legality, if their souls were " lawless," that is, if they did 
not submit heartily to the law of God ? He does not disparage 
attention to the minutest regulation, nor the most punctilious ob- 
servance of all regulations ; what he denounces is the being con- 
tent with these while the weightier matters are neglected. 

6. It was not wrong to cleanse the outside of the cup, but if 
either was to be neglected let it not be the inside. If their scru- 
pulousness led them to strain their wine through 
a filter, so that they might not swallow an unclean 

insect, how absurd would such rigid observance of the law be 
when contrasted with the swallowing of so huge an unclean 
beast as a camel ! Jesus uses this proverbial expression to exhibit 
their enormous hypocrisy. 

7. This is set forth in the horrible figure of a grave, the tomb over 
which was whitened, not to beautify it but to warn all passers-by 

that they were in peril of becoming legally un 
clean.* But that very signal of filth made the 
graveyard picturesque, while it failed to sweeten the grave that 
was full of the corruption of putrefying corpses. Such were these 
Purists — pure and white as lime outside, but inwardly filthy as 



Sixth contrast. 



Seventh contrast. 



* " The graves were, every year, on 
the 15'th Adar, whitened with a kind 
of chalk (tcotHa), a practice derived by 
the Kabbins from Ezekiel xxxix. 15; 
not merely for the sake of appearance 
but also that these places, the touch of 



which was defilement (Numb. xix. 10), 
might be more easily seen and avoided. 
(See the Eabbinical passages in Light- 
foot, Schottgen, and Wetstein.) Thus 
they always had a pleasant outward ap- 
pearance." — . 



THE THIRD DAY. 



587 



Final woe. 



lotting flesh. What a contrast with the pure in heart who re- 
ceive the sixth benediction of the sermon on the Mount ! 

8. The eighth " woe " sums up the whole by denouncing their 
hatred of the true spiritual life. As a benediction was pro- 
nounced in the " Sermon on the Mount " on those 
who were persecuted for righteousness' sake, so 
in this valedictory is a woe uttered against those who are murder- 
ers of the prophets and those who inherit the spirit of the perse- 
cutors. The fathers of those Pharisees had killed the prophets. 
and those Pharisees themselves had adorned their graves, glad 
that the prophets who harassed their wicked fathers were not 
alive to torment their more wicked children. Men praise those 
of a former generation who did the very thing for which they 
denounce those of their own. Stier (vol. hi. 232) quotes : " Ask 
in Moses's times, Who are the good people % they will be Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob ; but not Moses — he should be stoned. Ask 
in Samuel's times, Who are the good people % they will be Moses 
and Joshua ; but not Samuel. Ask in the times of Christ, and 
they will be all the former prophets, with Samuel ; but not Christ 
and his Apostles." (Berlerib. Bibel.) 

They were in the last times. The opposition to spiritual views 
of God's government of the universe, which has prevailed in the 
Jewish heart and was growing intenser with each 
succeeding generation, culminated in the men of 
the time of Jesus. He was about to close the list of martyrs. Of 
those who had preceded him he speaks strangely. He speaks as 
from the consciousness of Almighty God ; as if he, in fact, were 
Almighty God. He (Jesus) had been sending prophets and wise 
men to persuade them away from their materialism to a spiritual 
religion. It had been a failure. They had grown worse and 
worse. They were now reaching the very worst. The blood of 
the martyrs was about to be demanded at their hands, from the 
blood of Abel, who represented the religion of spirituality, and 
was killed by Cain, who represented material, outward, churchly 
religion, to the blood of Zachariah, who, by the order of King 
Joash, was stoned in the Court of the Temple, and who died say- 
ing, " The Lord looks on this and requires it." * The goodness 



Last times. 



* See 2 Chron. xxiv. 20. The cri- 
tics and commentators have had much 
hard work with Matt, xxiii. 36, where 



Zacharias is called "the son of Bara- 
chias." Relief came with Tischendorfa 
discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, from 



588 



THE LAST WEEK. 



The heart of 
Jesus melts. 



of this man and of his father Jehoiada, and the atrocity of his mur- 
der, kept his memory vividly in the minds of the Jews. Jesus 
told the Jews that the measure was full. They were making the 
last martyrdoms, and then would come their judgment and their 
destruction. 

He seemed to hear the wings of the Roman eagle sounding in 
the air. Dear Jerusalem was the frightened brood of chickens. 
He had denounced with the utmost vehemence 
the sins which he had pictured with the most 
poignant invective. But the sinners were his 
own people. That which was about to be the prey of the bird of 
power and plunder was his own Jerusalem, metropolis of his 
nation, seat of the throne of his ancestors, site of the Temple 
of his Father. His heart melted. After the flash of the light- 
ning-stroke of his terribly eloquent denunciation of their sins 
came the shower of the rain of his pity and compassion. The 
omnipotence of God is not able to reduce the obstinacy of man. 
Even this Jesus, who had opened the eyes of the blind, and the ears 
of the deaf, who had stilled the stormy sea, who had cleansed the 
leper, and raised the dead, even this Jesus had not power to break 
the rebellion of his proud countrymen. Even Omnipotence is not 
a sufficient servant for Love. He sets the feebleness of his tears 
over against the power of his miracles, and to this day his sob in 
the pathos of his " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," wins more hearts to 
ways of goodness and love than his eightfold "woe, woe," repels 
from the paths of badness and hate. 

And thus ended his Valedictory to Judaism. It is no longei 
his. Jerusalem is no longer the House of his Father. He speaks 
of it to the Jews as " Your House." It represents no longer 
Religion but Churchism. It has ceased to be God's, and becomes 
Man's. 

He sat down in the Court of the "Women, opposite the Treasury, 
where the chest for alms is placed. He saw the rich ostenta- 
tiously throw in their heavy coin, whose ring arrested the atten- 



which it appears that those words were 
not originally in Matthew, but crept in 
from some copyist's note. Zacharias 
is known to have been the son of Je- 
hoiada. After all, it may have been 
Zecharias, the son of Barachias. In 
Ezra, v. 1, we have " Zechariah, the 



son of Iddo," and in the book of Zecha- 
riah, i. 1, 7, we have Zecharias, the son 
of Barachias, the son of Iddo. The 
Old Testament does not mention his 
murder, but Whitby quotes the Targum 
as saying that he was killed "in the day 
of propitiation." 




THE THIRD DAY. 589 

tion of spectators. Among the donors came a woman, a poor 

widow, and she threw in two lepta, which make a quadrans. A 

lepton was a bronze coin, the smallest in value 

of all in circulation at that time. Two lepta 

r mite. 

made a Roman quadrans, which was equal to 
about one-fifth of an American cent, so that one lepton really 
represented the imaginary mill of American currency. When 
Jesus saw all this, there stood before 
him again the two types, the religionist 
of externals and the religionist of in- 
ternals : one good in such deeds as men 
would acknowledge, and the other good 
in such thoughts and character as God 

acknowledges. He called the attention of his disciples to this. 
His comment was, " I assuredly say to you, That this poor widow 
has cast more in than all they that have cast into the trea- 
sury ; for all they cast in of their superfluity ; but she of her 
poverty cast in all that she had, even her whole living." She 
had two lepta. She might have given alms and saved something 
for herself. The beauty of her character lay in her perfect con- 
secration. She held nothing back. The moral sense of the 
world has indorsed the verdict of Jesus. 

The testimony of one of his biographers, John (xii. 42), is that 
" among the chief rulers many believed on him ; but on account 
of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put 
out of the synagogue ; for they loved the praise of men more 
than the praise of God." We cannot now learn what means the 
friends of Jesus had of knowing this, but the conduct of Nico- 
demus would make it probable, even if it had not been asserted. 

It may have been at this time, and in the presence of these os- 
tentatious alms-givers and of these time-serving rulers, that Jesus 
made the utterances recorded by John, xii. 44-50 : 

aT T-iiT -it . i a. Last appearance 

" He who believes on me believes not on me but . .' m , 

in the Temple, 
on Him that sent me. And he who sees me sees 

Him that sent me. I have come a light into the world, that who- 
soever believes on me should not remain in darkness. And if 
any one hear my words, and keep them not, I do not judge him ; 
for I did not come that I should judge the world, but that I 
should save the world. He who rejects me, and does not receive 
my words, has one who judges him the word that I have spoken 



590 THE LAST WEEK. 

that shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of 
myself, but the Father who sent me gave me a commandment 
what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that 
his commandment is continuous life : whatever I speak, as the 
Father has spoken to me, thus I speak." 

He ceased. It was his last utterance in the Temple, from which 
he now departed. 

As they were going out the disciples looked upon the Temple, 
its massiveness and solidity,- and beautiful adornings of gifts and 

goodly stones. They said, " Teacher, see what 
T , manner of stones and what buildings ! " They 

would seem to intimate a contrast between the 
apparent strength of the huge structure before them and the 
prophecy of desolation which Jesus had uttered concerning it. 
Perhaps also they had a natural national pride in the grandeur of 
their Temple, and there might have been a deprecatory tone in 
their speech. The solemn reply of Jesus was, " Do you see all 
these great buildings? There shall not be left here stone on 
stone that shall not be thrown down." 

They silently passed up Mount Olivet on the way to Bethany. 
It was evening. He sat down to rest on a projection from which 

could be seen the city, now crowded with nearly 
, . three millions of worshippers, and from which the 

Temple, its roof covered with golden spikes, that 
flashed and glittered in the setting sun, was specially conspicuous. 
It was a grand sight. Perhaps also faintly through the evening 
stillness came snatches of psalms and hymns from singers in the 
Temple, as up through the quiet air curled slowly the smoke from 
the evening sacrifice. Then Peter, James, John, and Andrew came 
to him with the complex question, " Tell us, when shall these things 
be ? and what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of 
the present order of things ? " They acknowledged his Messiah- 
Bhip. They connected the fall of the Temple with the destruc- 
tion of the existing order of things. They could not conceive for 
a moment that the downfall of the world should not immediately 
follow the overthrow of the Temple. 

Jesus replied : "Take care lest any one should deceive you, for many shall 
come in my name, saying, ' I am the Christ, 1 and shall deceive many. The 
time draws near. Go not after them. And you shall be about to [you shaD 
in the future] hear of wars and rumors of wars : see to it, be not troubled ' 



THE THIRD DAY. 591 

for it is necessary that this come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation 
Bhall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, 
and there shall be shocks and famines in places; and Discourses to the dia- 
fearful things and great signs shall there be from heaven, ° ip , es ' a f /f ° m e 

° ° ° ' Talents and of the Ten 

but all these are only the beginning of the pangs of virgins. 
childbirth. 

" But beware of men, for before all these things they shall lay their hands 
on you and persecute you, they will deliver you up to the councils, and into 
the prisons, and shall scourge you in the synagogues; and you shall be 
brought before governors and kings for my sake, and it shall turn to you for 
a testimony to them and to the nations. But when they shall deliver you up 
be not over-anxious beforehand how or what ye shall speak, nor premeditate 
what you shall answer, but whatever shall be given you in that hour, that 
speak. I will give you a mouth and wisdom which your adversaries shall not 
be able to resist nor gainsay ; for you are not the speakers, but the Spirit of 
your Father speaking in you. 

" Think not that I came to cast peace on the earth ; I came not to cast peace 
but a sword rather, and divisions. I came to cast lire upon the earth ; and 
what will I ? If it were already kindled ! For I came to set a man against 
his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against 
her mother-in-law. And the enemies of a man are those of his own house- 
hold : for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three 
against two, and two against three. 

" And they shall deliver you up to affliction. And a brother shall betray a 
brother to death, and a father a child, and children shall rise up against their 
parents and shall put them to death. They shall kill some of you, and you 
shall be detested of all nations on account of my name. And afterwards 
many shall be caused to fall and betray their associates for affliction. 

" I say to you, my friends, Be not afraid of those who kill the body and after 
that have not anything more to do. I will show ye whom ye should serve : 
Him, who after He has killed has power to cast into Gehenna. Fear Him. 
And many false prophets shall be raised up and deceive many. And because 
lawlessness shall abound, the love of many will become cold. But he who en- 
dures to the end, the same shall be preserved. By your patience gain your lives. 
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the king 
dom. And preached shall be this glad tidings of the kingdom through the whole 
inhabited world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall come the end. 

"When, then, you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, and tfca 
abomination of desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel, stationed ir 
the sacred place, where it should not be — [he who reads, let him understand 
— then know that her desolation is at hand ; then let those who are in Judaea 
flee to the mountains ; and let those who are in the midst of her depart out, 
and let not those who are in the country places enter into her, and let not him 
who is on the roof come down to take anything out of his house ; nor let him 
that is in the field turn back to take his garment. Remember Lot's wife. 
For these are days of punishment, that all things which are written may be 
fulfilled. 



592 THE LAST WEEK. 

" And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that suckle in those 
days ! But pray that your flight be not in winter nor on the Sabbath-days ; 
for there shall be in those days great distress on the land, and wrath on this 
people, such as has not been seen from the beginning of the world until now, 
nor ever shall be. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be 
led away captive into all nations ; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by 
the nations, until the times of the nations shall be fulfilled. And except those 
days were shortened there should no flesh be saved : but on account of the 
chosen those days shall be shortened. 

" Days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of 
Man, and you shall not see it. Then if any one shall say unto you, ' Lo ! here 
is Christ,' or ' there,' believe not. For there shall arise false Christs and false 
prophets, and shall show signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even 
the chosen. But I have told you before. If they shall say to you, ' Behold he 
is in the desert ! ' go not forth ; ' Behold he is in the secret chambers ! ' believe 
not. For as the lightning comes out of the east and shines to the west, so 
shall be the coming of the Son of Man, in his day." 

His hearers broke in with the interrupting question, " Where, 
Lord % " He replied, " Where the carcass is, there are gathered 
the eagles." He resumed : — 

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, 
and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, 
and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken ; and on the earth distress of 
nations, men in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and waves, men fainting 
for fear and expectation of the things coming on the inhabited world. And 
then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man ; and all the tribes of the earth 
shall mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of 
heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a 
great trumpet, and he shall gather his chosen from the four winds, from 
one end of heaven to the other. And when these things begin to come to 
pass, then look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws 
nigh. 

" Now learn the parable from the fig-tree and all the trees. When already 
its branch has become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is 
nigh. Thus also when you shall see all these things, know that the kingdom 
of God is near, at the doors. I assuredly say to you, This race shall not pass 
away until all these things be done. But concerning that day and hour knows 
no one, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. But as 
the Days of Noe, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man. For as they were 
in the days which were before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and 
giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and did not 
know until the flood came and took all away ; likewise as it was in the days 
of Lot ; they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were 
selling, they were planting, they were building ; but on the day Lot went out 
from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them 



THE THIRD DAY. 593 

ak ; thus shall be also in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed. I 
tell you that in that night there shall be two in one bed, one shall be taken 
and the other left : then there shall be two in the field, one shall be taken and 
one left : two grinding at the mill, one shall be taken and one left. 

" Look to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be oppressed with surfeit- 
ing and drunkenness and anxious cares of this life, and so that day may come 
on you unawares ; for as a snare shall it come on all those who dwell on the 
face of all the earth. Watch, then, and at every season pray that you may be 
considered worthy to escape all the things about to come to pass, and to stand 
before the Son of Man : for you know not when the time is. But know this, 
that if the householder had known in what watch the thief would come, he 
would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken 
into : on this account do you be ready also, for in an hour when you do not 
think it, the Son of Man comes." 

Peter broke in with, " Lord, do you speak this parable to us, or 
even to all % " Jesus replied : — 

" What I say to you I say to all, Watch. It is as a man taking a far journey, 
who, leaving his house, gave authority to his slaves, and to each man liis 
work, and commanded the gatekeeper to watch. Who, then, is the faithful 
and wise slave whom the Lord will make ruler over his household, to give 
them the food in season ? Happy slave that, whom his lord coming shall find 
doing so ! I assuredly say to you that he shall make him ruler over all hi& 
possessions. But if the bad slave shall say in his heart, ' My lord delays,' and 
shall begin to strike his fellow-slaves, and to eat and drink with the drunken, 
the lord of that slave shall come on a day which he expects not, and in an 
hour that he knows not, and shall cut him in two, and give him his part with 
the hypocrites ; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

" Now that slave who knew his Lord's will and prepared not, neither did 
according to his will, shall be beaten much ; but he who knew not and did 
commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few. To whom much is 
given, of him much shall be required ; and to whom men have committed 
much, of him they will ask the more. Watch, therefore, for you know not 
what day your Lord comes — whether at even, or at midnight, or at the cock- 
crowing, or in the morning — lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. 

11 Then the kingdom of the heavens shall be likened to ten virgins, who, 
having taken their lamps, went forth to meet the bridegroom. Five of them 
were foolish, five prudent. For the foolish, having taken lamps, took no oil 
with them ; but the prudent took oil in the vessels with their lamps. But, the 
bridegroom delaying, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry 
was made, ' Behold ! the bridegroom ! go out to meet him.' Then all those 
virgins arose and trimmed their lamps ; and the foolish said to the prudent, 
' Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.' But the prudent answered, 
saying : ' Lest there be not enough for us and you, go rather to those who sell, 
and buy for yourselves.' And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, 
and they who were ready went in with him to the wedding-feast ; ar d the 
38 



594 THE LAST WEEK. 

door was shut. Afterwards come also the other virgins, saying : ' Sir, sir, open 
to us ; ' but he answering, said, ' I assuredly say to you, I do not know you.' 

" Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning, and yourselves 
like men waiting for their lord, when he will return from the wedding, thai 
when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. Happy 
slaves they whom the lord coming shall find watching. I assuredly say tc 
you, that he shall gird himself and make them recline, and will come near and 
serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or in the third watch, 
and find them thus, happy are they ! Watch, therefore, for ye know neither 
the day nor the hour. 

" And when the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be 
gathered all the nations ; and he shall separate them from one another, as the 
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats ; and he will place the sheep on 
the right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the King say to those on 
his right hand, ' Come, you who are praised of my Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : for I hungered and 
you gave me to eat, I thirsted and you gave me drink, I was a stranger 
and you made me a companion, naked and you clothed me : I was sick, and 
you visited me ; I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then shall the right- 
eous answer him, saying : ' Lord, when did we see you hungry, and fed you ? 
or thirsty, and gave you drink ? and when did we see you a stranger, and en- 
tertained you ; or naked, and clothed you ? and when did we see you sick, or 
in prison, and came to you ? ' And the King, answering, shall say to them : 
* I assuredly say to you, inasmuch as you did it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, you did it to me.' Then shall he say also to those on the left 
hand, ' Depart from me, you accursed, to the perpetual fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels ; for I hungered and you did not give me to eat, I thirsted 
and you did not give me to drink, I was a stranger and you did not enter- 
tain me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did 
not visit me.' Then they shall answer, saying, ' Lord, when did we see you 
hungering, or thirsting, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did 
not minister to you ? ' Then he shall answer them, saying, ' I assuredly say 
to you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of these least ones, ye did it not to 
me.' And these shall go away into perpetual punishment, but the righteous 
into perpetual life." 

This extraordinary discourse contains statements of what was 

then future, which cannot be regarded as the mere results of 

extraordinary sagacity, as some political men 

A prophecy. foretold the French Revolution years before it 
broke upon Europe. The character of the average Jewish mind 
and the state of feeling among the Jewish people might have led 
any observant person to perceive that the fanaticism of the people 
was becoming frantic, and that the wild excitement which led 
them to persecute Jesus to the death, because he would not be a 



THE THIRD DAT. 595 

political leader against Home, would finally dash Judaism with 
such violence against the Ruler of the nations as to produce such 
results as came forty years afterwards, in the taking of the city 
by Titus and the dispersion of the Jewish people by Hadrian. 
But here some of the details are such as one would utter who had 
the veil of the future lifted, and beheld coming events with the 
intense spiritual insight of an inspired Seer. And yet there are 
none of the particularities which distinguish the predictions of 
the believers in a millennium, none of their chiliastic sensuous 
ideas. He takes the complexity of the question of his friends as 
the foundation of a description of the future, which embraced 
both the destruction of the Jewish theocracy and the final ground 
of judgment of men and nations. 

What he had said in the Temple naturally led his disciples to 
ask for further information. He had dislocated their ideas of the 
government of the world. They had not dreamed that the Tem- 
ple would be destroyed. There would come days of darkness, 
but the arrival of the Messiah would cover Mount Zion with 
splendor and flood the world with theocratic glory. Now he says 
that Judaism, with its Temple, is to be swept away. What then 
should be their relation to the world and to God ? They had rea- 
son to seek to be taught on these points. 

He first warns them to beware of interpreting the pangs of 

child-birth into the agonies preceding death. The nations would 

be astir. Yast physical and national upheavals 

.,..! 1-1 t ipi •• The nations 

would take place, but the end 01 the existing or- g^^ 

der of things is not yet. What men call endings 
are really beginnings. Deaths are births. His people, those who 
adopted his principles, would suffer many bitternesses. Christians 
should suffer especially at the hands of churchmen. The truth, 
for which he was about to suffer death, would always be an occa- 
sion of contention. There would always be the double trouble of 
opposing ecclesiastical influence and those distracting pretenders 
the false prophets. But endurance, prudence, and vigilance would 
bring his followers through all troubles. 

Jerusalem should certainly be destroyed. A desolating abomi- 
nation should stand in the holy place, when the 
eagles of the Eoman standard, which were wor- Jera salem de- 
shipped as idols, as representing the divinity of 
power, should be planted in the precincts of the Temple of Jeho 



THE LAST WEEK. 

vah. He gave directions to his followers what to do then. They 
should flee to the mountains, probably those of Perea, any place 
which should take them from these horrors. That the gospel of 
Matthew was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, ap- 
pears from the fact that he calls attention to this prediction and 
these directions by the parenthesis, " Let the reader understand." 
The Christians subsequently obeyed these directions. When the 
Roman armies encamped against Jerusalem, they fled to Pel la, 
and thus escaped that terrible slaughter in which 1,500,000 Jews 
are said to have fallen. If the whole Jewish populace had given 
up their idea of a political Messiah, and yielded to the spiritual 
teachings of Jesus, and felt that the Messiah's kingdom was inward 
and not outward, and abandoned all thought of attempting by 
the sword what was in that way wholly impracticable, they would 
have avoided that terrific catastrophe, which filled the world with 
shudderings, and to this day stands up as the bloodiest horror of 
the past. 

But amid all commotions, when pseudo-Christs arose, the dis- 
ciples of Jesus were not to be drawn hither and thither in vain 
expectation of the revelation of the Son of Man. 
When that really occurred, men should not have 
to look after it. It would force itself on the attention of all men 
like a lightning-flash. It would fall like a thunderbolt. The 
disciples said, " Where, Lord \ " His reply was a proverbial form 
of expression containing a general principle. Wherever there is 
a dead carcass, there the vultures do come. To keep from being 
eaten by birds of prey, you must keep alive. God has his scaven- 
gers everywhere. If a man die, or a nation, or a church, there 
are forces provided to consume the dead body and transmute it 
into live tissue. Judaism is dead. The wings of the vultures are 
abroad in the sky, and these devouring birds will scent the prey, 
and come and take it away. 

From the fatal downfall of Jerusalem the Teacher ascends to 

the general judgment of mankind. Here there is nothing to 

gratify vain curiosity. There is a graphic repre- 
General judg- fe f. . ,. t • / i • 

ment of mankind mentation of prodigious events in nature and in 

human society, as ushering in what Jesus calls 

the Parousia of the Son of Man, that is, his coming, his appearing, 

his revelation of himself. It may be delayed, but it will come. 

God works gradually forward to great results ; but they often 




'■r^„- ■■ : ■ 



THE THUCD DAY. 597 

break upon the world at last like thunder-claps. The flood in the 
days of Noah and the rain of fire in the days of Lot are examples. 
The people on whom this ruin fell were years in ripening for 
their doom ; but it fell at last like the downcoming of an enor- 
mous trip-hammer. It will be so as often a? God shall visit the 
world with summary judgment. One cataclysm may succeed an- 
other, but the world does not take warning. The Deluge was no 
lesson to Sodom and Gomorrah, nor the destruction of those cities 
a warning to the Jews in the days of Jesus, nor the downfall of 
Jerusalem and Judaism any preventive of the French Revolution. 
So whatever this " Parousia " of the Son of Man may mean, it 
will come suddenly, and all the development of the causes will 
not make men ready for the results. The race of mankind, Jesus 
taught, should not disappear from the earth before all the things 
he had predicted should come to pass. The certainty should 
strengthen the faith, while the suddenness should keep all who 
believe that Jesus is a true Teacher on the spiritual alert. The 
words of warning, he distinctly asserts, were not confined to his 
immediate friends, but to all men, for they are founded on gen- 
eral and perpetual principles. 

The necessity of vigilance is illustrated further by the case of 
servants whose master is absent. Of the time of his return they 
have no certain knowledge, but they know he will return, and 
they must keep in a perpetual state of readiness. This is further 
illustrated by the parable of ten virgins, who, according to Oriental 
custom, were waiting until the bridegroom should appear, bringing 
his wife to his home. They were to add to the splendor of the 
procession by their torches. As is often the case in these in- 
stances, a delay keeps the bridegroom until midnight. The vir- 
gins all sleep, so that the foolish do not perceive that their lamps 
are dying out, nor are the wise virgins wakeful enough to warn 
their sisters of their danger ; and so the call comes upon all sud- 
denly. The wise have oil enough for themselves, and they proper- 
ly conclude that it is better to have five torches burning brilliantly 
through the whole time of the procession than that the party 
should enter with ten, all of which should soon be extinguished.* 



* Trench quotes Ward ( View of the 
Hindoos, vol. 2, p. 29), who describes 
the parts of a marriage ceremony in 
India of which he was an eye-witness. 



He says : "After waiting two or three 
hours, at length, near midnight, it was 
announced, as in the very words of Scrip- 
ture, ' Behold, the bridegroom comes 



598 THE LAST WEEK. 

He thus teaches personal responsibility and the necessity of cease- 
less vigilance. 

Jesus sets forth himself as the representative of humanity. 

Humanity shall be judged by him in both senses. His moral 

sense is the standard of judgment. Whatever 

Jesus the re- j n -j ur y j s ^one to any human being, however feeble, 

presentative of . '! \. . _ J . _ & ' _ _ . ' 

humanity iriendless, unmnuential, apparently worthless, is to 

bring to the injurer just what that act would 
bring if done to Jesus. He is the Son of Humanity. Hurt 
humanity and you hurt him. Do good to humanity at any point, 
and you do good to him. Water to any thirsty man, bread to any 
hungry woman, clothing to any naked child, kind attention to any 
unknown stranger, visit to any prisoner, criminal or innocent, is 
set down as done to the Son of Man. He refuses to have any- 
thing which the giver is not willing to bestow upon humanity. 
He takes the lowliest human being, whoever he or she may be, 
and says, " Inasmuch as you did it not to this least one you did it 
not to me." Any failure of duty to any human being Jesus takes 
as a personal neglect of himself, while he acknowledges as a per- 
sonal favor the slightest kindness done to the most nearly insigni- 
ficant human being. 

This is the most sublime and tender Humaneness. 

It is to be remarked how, in the setting forth of the doctrine of 
future rewards and punishments, the goodness of the heavenly 
Father is presented by Jesus. From the foundation of the world 
a state of exaltation had been prepared for all the good. God 
does not make devils, and bad people, and hells. Angels may 
make themselves devils, the sons of God may make themselves 
bad people, wickedness may make hells ; but God makes only 
kingdoms of glory, and angels, and sons of God. He does all he 
can to keep angels from becoming devils, and men from becoming 
bad, and high celestial places from becoming infernal pits. He 
uses all possible attractions to keep men from going away from 
him. He does not curse them, but they are accursed. He does 
not drive them away, but they do depart. To be a man, one must 
have a free will. To be a son of God, and made in the likeness 



go ye out to meet him.* All the per- 
sons employed now lighted their lamps 
and ran with them in their hands to fill 
up their stations in the procession — 



some of them had lost their lights and 
were unprepared, but it was then too late 
to seek them ; and the cavalcade moved 
forward." 



THE THIRD DAY. 599 

of God, one must be as free as God. Does not every man who re- 
flects and examines his consciousness feel sure that he is ? When 
a man chooses to put himself in such position that the attraction 
of hell becomes greater than the attraction of heaven, he gravitates 
naturally toward hell. 

And yet there is nothing dogmatic in all this wonderful dis- 
course. There is uo question of curiosity settled, no question the 
answer to which could have no bearing on the 
moral character of men. ~No subscription to mat i sn , 
formal creeds secures the final benediction, but 
only such belief as is the necessary root of the moral tree which 
bears the fruits of humanity, is saving. God's discriminations 
here are all made in regard to character ; and so will be the dis- 
criminations of the other world. Jesus sets himself forward as 
the representative of humanity, while he is the judge of mankind. 
Such belief in him, as that representative, as shall lead to such 
love for him as shall produce on all possible occasions all possible 
kindness to all kinds of men, it is that belief which keeps a man 
in the circle of the humane, and the humane are those who are 
drawn closely to Jesus, " the Son of Man" and thus to one an- 
other. As humanity dies out of man devilishness sets in. Jesus 
recognized the existence of a personal devil. Men, in every act, 
become more and more like one or the other — like Jesus or the 
devil. There are judgments from time to time on earth : there 
are to be judgments in the future, the details of which are not fur- 
nished, but in general terms of appalling grandeur those judg- 
ments are described. One of these temporal judgments of men 
should be had at the destruction of Jerusalem, the horrors of which 
Should typify another, a spiritual, a grander judgment on a broader 
scale. That stupendous event should have no effect upon the 
character of those whose sentence it should pronounce, but that 
character should determine the sentence. They shall go away, the 
righteous — that is the humane — into continuous life ; the wicked— 
that is the inhumane — into continuous punishment. He does not 
tell us how long that punishment and that life shall be. He uses 
a word (clioovlos) which specially conceals any definite conclusion. 
It may be endless, it may have an end, it may be immediate and 
to continue through the existing state of things ; it is pain and 
pleasure set over against one another, with no limit of time. Time, 
measureless or limited, is very little, but character is everything. 



CHAPTEE IY. 

THE FOURTH DAY FROM TUESDAY EVENING TO WEDNESDAY 

EVENING. 

At the conclusion of this speech, most probably on the same 
evening, Tuesday, which was the beginning of the fourth day of 
. the week, according to Jewish reckoning, and 

hopes while they were going towards Bethany, Jesus 

said to his friends, " You know that after two 
days is the Feast of the Passover, and the Son of Man is be- 
trayed to be crucified." There could be nothing plainer than 
that. He should not carry out the Jewish Messianic idea. He 
should disappoint all the worldly hopes of his personal friends. 
They must give up forever their expectations that he would prove 
a temporal Deliverer and regard him hereafter as a spiritual 
Messiah. 

When Jesus and his disciples reached Bethany they found that 

an entertainment had been provided for them in the house of 

Simon " the leper." Who he was we do not 

Feast in Simon's know. It is probable that he had had the leprosy 

eve^in A^nT aild Lad be6n heakd hj JeSUS ' ^ ^ he gaVG 
a.d. 30 ' ' ^ s su PP er m token of his gratitude. Perhaps 

he was a relative of Lazarus ; if not, the two 

families were intimate, as Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary were 

present, " and Martha served." 

After the meal had begun, while Jesus reclined at the table, 

Mary came in quietly and opened a flask, and noiselessly poured 

the ointment on the head of her friend. She had 
Mary anoints Je- . , , .,, , ,-, r t • i 

Bus watched with loving eyes the agony or his soul, 

his harassed look as he returned from his daily 

conflicts in Jerusalem. She naturally desired to make some 

marked and significant display of her love. On that aching head 

she poured the nard. There, stretched from the couch, were the 

Tollen,, throbbing feet that had been standing in the Temple 



THE FOURTH DAY. 601 

during the day, and bringing him across Olivet in the evening 
She recollected that they had stood beside her brother's grave. 
Now, there sat that brother, alive, well, and eating. Her heart 
went out in all lovingness. She spent the remainder of the oint- 
ment on his feet, then threw the flask away, and wrapped the deai 
limbs in her hair. 

So silently and unobtrusively had she done this, that it was oni; 
when the house was filled with the odor of the ointment that the 
disciples perceived what had been done, although Jesus from the 
first knew that it was Mary, and what she was doing. 

There was one dark spirit at the feast, who was about to do the 
deed of treason which was to damn his fame forever. It was Ju 
das Iscariot. He ventured the first sinister criti- 
cism. "Why was this waste of the ointment 
made ? Why was it not sold and given to the poor \ " The othei 
disciples concurred in this view, after it had been suggested by 
treasurer Judas under the specious guise of consideration for the 
poor. The criticism grew into a murmur round the table. 

The reply of Jesus is most striking. " Let her alone," said he ; 

" why do you trouble her ? She lias wrought a beautiful work on 

me. You have the poor with you always, and 

, .,, • 'V""ii ii The reply of Je- 

when you will you may do them good ; but me sug 

you have not always. She has done what she 
could : she came beforehand to anoint my body for the burial. 
Verily I say to you, Wherever the gospel shall be preached in the 
whole world, what she has done shall also be spoken of as a me- 
morial of her." 

This is a remarkable speech every way. Jesus was caught in 
the toils of his enemies. He always knew that there was to be 
no temporal kingdom, with offices, and honors, and emoluments, 
and that now death lay near before him. Beyond that death he saw 
that his cause was to rise and conquer, that the whole world was 
to hear the glad tidings of Jesus, and that whenever and wher- 
ever that gospel was preached, Mary's graceful tribute should be 
recited as a memorial of her. It is noticeable as showing the 
care of Jesus for the graceful when it has no special utility. 
Jesus took care of the beautiful ; he knew that the useful would 
take care of itself. He showed how much more precious in his 
sight is the service of the heart than the service of the head ; the 
worship of love than the labor of thought. 



602 



THE LAST WEEK. 



While Jesus was predicting the downfall of Jerusalem, as he 

sat on a projection of Mount Olivet, the churchmen inside the 

. city were plotting his destruction. He had that 
A meeting of , ^ , . t n ° . s 

conspirators. ^ humbled them m the sight of the people. 

He had every day increased their rage more and 
more, and had constantly escaped, always going out of the city at 
nightfall. They felt that they must do something promptly and 
decisively to suppress Jesus. With that view a large, and perhaps 
confidential, assemblage of chief priests and scribes and elders 
met together " in the palace of the high-priest," says Matthew. 
They did not go to the usual place, the council-chamber called 
Gazith, which, according to the Talmud, joined the south side of 
the Temple ; they went to the hall or court of Caiaphas, son-in- 
law of Annas, a man who had degraded the pontificate by giv- 
ing it political connections. It is not certain where this " palace," 
or hall, or court was. An ancient tradition makes it the country- 
house of Caiaphas, the ruins of which are still shown on the sum- 
mit of the Hill of Evil Counsel.* 

The intent of the meeting was to devise some scheme of subtil- 
ity by which they could quickly move him out of the way. They 
did not dare to attempt to take him openly. He 
postponed ^ad adherents and warm partisans. The popu- 

lace were excited in his behalf. His recent mir- 
acles and his manifest triumph over the church party in the most 
public manner had brought the people to his side. The shouts of 
the Palm-Sunday Messianic salutations had scarce yet died out of 
the air. If they arrested him publicly there might be a public 
attempt at rescue, and then there would have been a collision. 
The Roman guard, who never studied Jewish ecclesiastical ques- 
tions, and who, from the tower of Antonia, looked down upon the 
Temple court and kept the often tumultuous crowd of worship- 
pers under surveillance, would have rushed upon them with the 
sword and consigned both parties to indiscriminate slaughter. By 
craft, therefore, must he be taken. After a long consultation this 
was the result of their deliberations : that the Passover should be 



* ' ' Tradition makes the bargain with 
Judas to have been entered into at the 
country-house of Caiaphas, the ruins 
of which are still shown upon the sum- 
mit of the Hill of Evil Counsel. The 
tradition is not ancient ; but it is men- 



tioned as a singular fact that the mon- 
ument of Annas, who may have had a 
country-seat near his son-in-law, is 
found in this neighborhood." Williams, 
H. C, ii. 496, quoted by Andrews. 



THE FOURTH DAY. 



603 



allowed to go by, that the crowds of visitors to the metropolis on 
this festal occasion should be permitted to depart, and that then 
the Sanhedrim should contrive to do away with Jesus, without 
noise, without calling attention to him. It never seemed to have 
entered their minds that this end might be gained by the treason 
of some member of the circle of Jesus. What they were resolv- 
ing should be after the Passover, Jesus was predicting should 
take place on that very day. 

We can fancy the surprise and diabolical delight of the San- 
hedrim when suddenly one of the Twelve, one of the most inti- 
mate friends of Jesus, found access to them and 
offered to betray him to them, so that they might th 
avoid the difficulties of his apprehension in pub- 
lic. This was Judas of Kerioth. The reply of Jesus to his criti- 
cism of Mary's waste of the ointment seemed to convince Judas 
that things were not going forward on the path he had marked 
out in his own mind, and 
so he took the resolve to 
precipitate the work by a 
bold movement. He went 
back from Simon's house 
to Jerusalem and sought 
the ecclesiastical authori- 
ties. They were glad, and covenanted with him "for thirty 
pieces of silver." These pieces are supposed to be the silver 
shekels, each of which was worth a little over two English shil 
lings, or fifty American cents, so that the whole sum offered Ju- 
das was a little more than £3 English, or $15 American. A re- 
ference to Exodus xxi. 32, shows that this had more anciently 
been the price of a slave.* It has been suggested by Lange that 
when the Sanhedrim made this offer to Judas it was with cunning 
irony. Judas accepted. 

The case of Judas is a study. We may as well enter upon it 
here, anticipating so much of the remainder of his history as the 
New Testament writers record. No historical 
character has had so hard a fate. Even if the 

uita. 

ingenuity of those who please themselves in mak- 
ing theories which shall expose the falseness of long-received 
conclusions, or the pleas of those whose amiability is in excess, 

* Compare the remarkable passage in Zechariah xi. 12. 




The case of Ju- 



604 



THE LAST WEEK. 



shall do something for poor Judas, there will still remain the f act 
that for more than eighteen centuries his name has been a horror 
in all lands where it has been known, his fame the blackest among 
men, his portrait in the gallery of historical personages the most 
deeply draped, and his whole character considered the most infer- 
nal of all that have been mortal. Poets, painters, and preachers 
have united to damn him from generation to generation.* He 
has been the one culprit who for long ages had not a single hu- 
man brother to say one word in his behalf. This itself has been 
a terrible doom. 

Of late years examination of his character, his motives, and his 
conduct has gone far to mitigate the verdict of the past. Every 
. examination of the career of Jesus involves an ex- 
tions amination of the case of Judas, and the very 

unanimity of opinion in past ages has so aroused 
the suspicion of modern criticism, that some writers who have 
not concerned themselves with Jesus have found a fascination 
in the unique historical position of Judas, attracting them to 
an analysis of his natural characteristics and of his motives in 
this most unfortunate and fatal betrayal of his Teacher. The 
German critics first suggested that the story of Judas had been 
misread and the man misunderstood ; that appearances were so 
frightfully against him at the first as to put him under a cloud, 
which his sudden death, quickly following his betrayal of Jesus, 
prevented him from dissipating, and which no one subsequently 
had any interest in removing, while partisanship for Jesus gave 
his followers a reason for making that cloud as dark as possible. 



* I have been told by a friend that in 
South America an image of Judas is 
submitted, on certain days, to the pop- 
ular execration, and that he himself had 
given Judas a kick in the streets of Rio. 
There was not much of Judas left at the 
close of a day of such treatment. 

In the Prince of the House of Da- 
vid, a romance founded on the facts in 
the life of Jesus, the author, Rev. Mr. 
lngraham, gives his ideal of Judas in 
the following description, which shows 
how this ideal was constructed by the 
natural dislike to Judas caused by the 
historical position he sustains towards 



Jesus: — "He was low in height, was 
ill-featured, and his attire was mean : 
but he had a suspicious air, combined 
with a cringing deference, that made 
made me think he must be a hypocrite. 
He smiled with his mouth and teeth, 
but at the same time looked sinister out 
of his eyes. An air of humility seemed 
to be put on to conceal the pride and 
wickedness of his character. He looked 
like a man who could artfully deceive 
to gain his selfish ends, and who would 
kneel to you to overturn you. The 
sound of his voice confirmed my first 
impression of him." 



THE FOURTH DAY. 605 

De Quincey sums up the reasonings of the Germans along this 
line of thought with suggestions of his own, the amount of which 
is that Judas was not in the bad sense a traitor, . 

that his movements during this Passover week theory 
were not intended to crush, nay, nor even to re- 
tard, but rather to advance the cause of Jesus. He may have 
had some self-seeking in all that he did, but not base treachery 
and certainly not petty avarice. His reasoning was fallacious, 
as subsequent events have shown, but it was just such as an aver- 
age intellect would have pursued before the catastrophe, in view 
of such facts as are now known to have been before the mind of 
Judas, and specially operative upon such a mental and moral con- 
stitution as that of Judas. 

Quite lately this theory has been taken up by Mr. Story, an 
American sculptor residing in Rome, and worked into a poem of 
considerable dramatic force, entitled The Roman 
Lawyer in Jerusalem, first published in Black- poe 
wood, and afterward in a small volume. In this poem the theory is 
such an advance on that of the Germans and De Quincey as to 
make Judas, upon the whole, the very best and noblest of the 
Twelve Apostles, most believing, most daring, yet most delicate. 
Of all the Apostles he was the only one who so believed in the 
Godhood of Jesus that he felt that no power could kill him, and if 
he could put his Master in just such relation to human power 
that he would be compelled to let his Godhead break through his 
humanity, then should be brought to pass, what they all desired, 
the immediate inauguration of the Messianic kingdom. It might 
be a personal disaster to Judas to do it, but none of the other dis- 
ciples had the faith in Jesus and the dariug to make the venture. 
Judas had. But when he saw his dire mistake, and that Jesus 
did not burst out into undeniable Messianic splendor and power, 
Judas was so delicately constituted that his heart broke. This is 
the argument of Mr. Story's poem. 

Let us see how much of all this has ground in history and 
reason. 

Jesus originally selected Judas from a company of at least 
sixty of his followers to be of the number of the Twelve who 
should be on his " staff " and should be charged with the special 
duty of propagating his doctrines. Judas, then, was no worse 
and no better than the rest of them. He was an average man, 



606 THE LAST W EEK. 

of average moral and intellectual endowments. But he was 

drawn to Jesus, and by Jesus selected to the Apostolate. Tie was 

religious above the average. Through his whole 

Judas compared connection with Jesus, up to this point, he does 

with the other ,,. , ,i • i • v i n 

Apostles nothing and says nothing which draws a reproof 

from Jesus. He behaves better than the rest. 
He never had said or done anything to make Jesus say to him as 
he had to Peter, " Get behind me, Satan." He was a better-tem- 
pered man than John, who is the admiration of painters and 
romancers, for never, like John, had he desired to call down fire 
from heaven to consume his fellow-men. He never was such a 
profane liar as Peter proved to be, nor so ambitious as John and 
his brother James, who desired to share the Messianic kingdom 
with Jesus, and sit one on his right hand and the other on his 
left, ruling over their brethren. 

The only occasion when even acuteness can discover anything 
that can be tortured into a reproof is the supper in the house of 

Simon the Leper, when Judas suggested that the 
e o y re- mone y w hj c h had been spent on the ointment by 

Mary might have been better expended on the 
poor. If any candid reader will forget that it was Judas who 
made this remark, and notice that what Jesus said was not in 
opposition to the remark of Judas, a remark which Judas himself 
had learned from the very teaching of Jesus, — if the reader will 
only fancy that John might have said the same thing, and Jesus 
might have made to him the same reply, then all sign of reproof 
will disappear. It is to be recollected by those who will be criti- 
cal that when we read the account of that supper in John's twelfth 
chapter, we are prejudiced by the statement that it was Judas 
Iscariot who made the suggestion of economy in the matter of 
the ointment, and that John takes pains to inform us that it was 
he " which should betray him," and then he adds the damaging 
parenthesis : " This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but 
because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bore what was put 
therein." If we had only the narratives of Matthew and Mark we 
could never have had any suspicion that Jesus was reproving the 
suggestion of giving the money to the poor, but was rather, with 
his usual lofty yet tender courtesy, protecting the woman who 
loved him and was anointing him. 

It is to be considered, then, that John's saying "he was a thief " 



THE FOURTH DAY. 607 

does not prove that Judas had ever committed an act of theft or 
showed any signs of a proclivity towards peculation. He certainly 
had not been a thief up to the time of his elec- 
tion for the Apostolate. He was a man of execu- ti 
tive ability surpassing them all, and supposed to be 
a man of honesty equal to them all, else he had not been made their 
treasurer. That they had an insignificant exchequer is not proof 
that they would therefore be careless as to the person who should 
manage it : quite the contrary. Poor people who invest their sav- 
ings a dime at a time, need to be more careful than men who would 
not be embarrassed for an hour by the breaking of a bank in 
which they have deposited ten thousand dollars. These disciples 
were scrupulous and careful. There must have been frequent 
auditing of the accounts of Judas, not from any suspicion of 
foul dealing on his part, but to know how far their little fund 
would meet their pressing wants. A widow whose toil brings 
such weekly wages as that the most rigid economy must be exer- 
cised to keep her outgo from exceeding her income, counts over 
her little store more frequently and carefully than the Roths- 
childs count their ample assets. The disciples would have de- 
tected the leakage if Judas had purloined. Jesus would have 
found some method of. reproof, or at least of warning. But 
nothing of this kind ever occurred. No suspicion against Judas 
arose among the disciples until after the betrayal of Jesus. 

John wrote this verdict after Judas had betrayed Jesus. The 
other disciples must have been unspeakably outraged. It was 
natural. They would not have deserved to be the friends of 
Jesus if they had not felt the utmost horror at the betrayal. That 
would naturally lead them to believe any evil thing of the be- 
trayer, and as Judas certainly did receive money for his services 
in this transaction, it was most natural to suppose that he was so 
avaricious that he would have stolen, that he who would " sell his 
Master," for so they regarded it, for thirty shekels, the price of a 
slave, would not hesitate to steal, being at heart a thief ; and that 
he who had not tenderness enough for such a Master as Jesus as 
to make the earth, even if it were a solid chrysolite, no tempta- 
tion as a bribe for betrayal, could not have had any care for the 
poor. This is all that the words of John do really prove, namely, 
that his fellow- Apostles regarded the act of Judas as so horrible 
as to put him beyond the pale of Christian charity ; in which 



608 THE LAST WEEK. 

they might have been as much mistaken as John was when he 
wanted fire from heaven to burn up the Samaritan village. 

Judas had the " worldly " part of the work of the Apostles to 
attend to. He made the little purchases, and thus, as De Quincey 
suggests, came in contact with the " petty shop 
keepers," or, as I should say, mingled with that 
class from whom he gathered the popular opinion of men and 
measures. He was not confined to the spiritual influence of the 
inner circle of the friends of Jesus. He went out frequently 
into " the world," and coming back Judas believed, as they all 
did, that Jesus was going to establish a temporal kingdom. The 
difference between the eleven and Judas, as it seems to me, was 
simply this, that their's was a vague belief and expectation, influ- 
encing them more as a dream than as a vital power shaping their 
lives. Judas was no fanatic and no poet. I think Mr. Story not 
quite right when he speaks of him as a man " who took his 
dreams for firm realities." He studied all the phenomena of the 
case as a man of affairs, as an astute politician. He had more 
knowledge of the world and more practical sense than the other 
Apostles. He believed in the desirableness of throwing off the 
Roman yoke. He believed the time had come to do it. The 
people had grown into an impatience Uhat was passionate. If 
a proper leader could be found and a proper time to strike, 
the work could be accomplished. He found that leader in 
Jesus. 

It would seem probable that more than the other Apostles he 
believed in the Messiahship of Jesus, and in a loftier and at the 
same time more practical way. Let us suppose that he brooded 
over this thought for three years, not as a dreamer, but as a prac- 
tical working man. He would naturally come to see it in a light 
in which the other Apostles could not study it. The capacities of 
Jesus for such a leadership would be a question of profound in- 
terest. He saw in him prodigious power, power to work mira- 
cles, to escape through the heart of a mob as if he bore a charmed 
life. He was capable of overawing men. A crowd of merchants 
had rushed out of the Temple before his eyes of rebuke. There 
was a majestic augustness about him which made Judas feel that 
this was a King of Men. Devils bowed before him, while children 
were attracted to his side and were petted when they came, and 
women absolutely adored him to the very kissing of his feet. He 



THE FOURTH DAY. 609 

could raise the dead with a word ; could he not slay the wicked 

with a look ? 

Jesus had all the personal dignities and graces for a king of 

kings ; but there was one defect : he had no policy and no 

" push." So it must have seemed to Judas. . . 

r . , „ . . , Judas s opinion 

Jesus never took advantage 01 his personal pop- of Jesus# 

ularity to consolidate a party. He fed thousands 
of people and got nothing back. He confounded the ecclesiasti- 
cal leaders, and yet would not found a church, and now, when his 
affairs seemed to be reaching a crisis, he was making no move- 
ments ecclesiastical or political. This behavior, in the eyes of a 
politician, was simply absurd. Judas, no more than the other 
Apostles, recognized the interiomess and thoroughness of the 
kingdom which Jesus was preaching and trying to make them 
understand, how that it was like that ether which pervades the 
atmosphere, and glass, and all transparent substances, and is where 
there is neither air nor glass, — a kingdom which did not need to 
displace any existing kingdom or church, — a kingdom which 
could as well subsist in political anarchies as in empires, in re- 
publics as in despotisms, a kingdom which had no need of any 
outward and visible State, or any outward and visible Church, but 
could and would subsist in all forms of States and all forms of 
Church, and without all States and all Churches, a kingdom which 
did not exist, but subsist and persist, that did not stand out but 
fill through, that was not & phenomenon but a noumenon. 

Rooted and grounded in the belief that a temporal, sensuous, 
visible, Hebrew kingdom was to cover the earth and subdue the 
nations, nothing else would satisfy Judas. And 
he must have believed that Jesus expected such a He longed for a 

i * ••■■» : t i ,-i, . .-. •. temporal king- 

kmgdom, and expected to reign over it, but that dom 
he had not the promptness at the right moment 
to make the stroke, the requisite coup oVetat. In De Quincey's 
language, he seemed to Judas to be " sublimely over-gifted for 
purposes of speculation, but not commensurately endowed for the 
business of action and the sudden emergencies of life." And to 
Judas the conduct of his brother Apostles, and of all the follow- 
ers of Jesus, was most unwise and unprofitable. They needed all 
their funds, and yet were wasting it on ointment. The Apostles 
and the other friends of Jesus were doing nothing for him, sim- 
ply enjoying his society, walking about with him, behaving like 



610 THE LAST WEEK. 

children. It must have chafed Judas ; and although he made no 
special profession of attachment to Jesus, and received no dis- 
criminating attention from him, Judas may have felt at heart that 
he was doing more for " the cause " than they all, or at least had 
the most earnest desire to do. 

Over these things he had been brooding for months, if not years. 
Now the crisis was coming. Jesus himself seemed to be aban- 
. doning the Messianic work on which he had en- 

tered. It behooves us to consider every element 
which may have entered into the calculations of Judas. At this 
juncture of affairs he may have reviewed his reasonings and seen 
things in this position : he had been right as to the claims of 
Jesus to the Messiahship, or he had been wrong; the Established 
Church and Government had some claims upon Judas ; the 
Church was the enemy of Jesus ; the Church desired to suppress 
Jesus privately; Judas could agree with the clergy to point out 
Jesus at night quietly; then one of two things would occur — 
Jesus would raise the populace and proceed to carry the revolu- 
tion forward with vigor, or else he was an impostor, and it was 
right that he should be surrendered. This last thought I think 
could have been at most only a side-light on the mind of Judas. 
He could hardly have suspected Jesus of being an impostor. But 
in such a case as this a man is actuated by many, and sometimes 
contradictory, motives. But I agree with Neander, that avarice 
could scarcely have been a leading motive in the case of Judas. 
If he was avaricious and treacherous at heart, why, after receiv- 
ing the money from the priests, did he point out Jesus % There 
was nothing more to be gained, and it was not so offensive a thing 
to cheat the malignant priests as to betray his good Master. He 
kept his contract, showing that he was not treacherous ; and he 
returned the money when he saw that he was wrong. 

All that he did, in act, was to designate Jesus in a crowd at 
night. Let us consider the circumstances of his remorse and 

death, not forgetting the truth of Neander's re- 
Remorse and , « a ■ i .li • j-t 
death of Judas. mark : As a g eneral thm g> the impressions 

made upon a man by the results of his action 
testify but little as to his character and motives ; none can tell 
how an evil deed, even when deliberately planned and perpe 
trated, will react upon the conscience." Mark, Luke, and John 
are silent. Matthew and the writer of the Acts of the Apostles 



THE FOURTH DAY. 611 

are our only authorities. The former says (xxvii. 3) that when 
Judas saw that Jesus was condemned he returned the money to 
the priests and acknowledged that he had betrayed innocent 
blood; and then went out and hanged himself. In the Acts 
(i. 16) Peter, who had acted very basely at the betrayal of Jesus, 
is represented as saying that Judas had purchased a field with the 
wages of iniquity, " and falling on his face he burst asunder and 
all his bowels gushed forth." It is plain that both these accounts 
cannot be accurate. If he returned the money, then he did not 
buy a field with it. If he hanged himself, he did not meet with 
the horrible end depicted by Peter. Casaubon suggests that, 
according to Matthew, Judas hanged himself, and that he did 
this over the Valley of Gehinnon ; the branch broke or the rope 
was torn, and Judas, according to Peter, fell headlong and burst 
asunder ! This seems ridiculous ; and yet there does not seem 
to be any better theory. If taken literally, the accounts are con- 
tradictory, and one or the other was mistaken. Peter's speech 
is evidently loosely rhetorical. There must have been other facts 
of which we have no knowledge, and which might reconcile these 
statements. 

We are to remember the rooted belief among the Apostles and 
their countrymen that every marked physical evil was retributive 
of the individual's sins. It must needs be that they should sup- 
pose that Judas should have something horrible in his death. It 
is quite clear that he did come to some tragic end. When he saw 
what he had done, when he beheld Jesus with such placidity sub- 
mitting himself to the hands of the church and the state for ex- 
ecution, all at once there rolled back upon him the tide of his 
earliest affection for Jesus, the remembrance of all the beautiful 
and beneficent life of Jesus, a perception of his own huge and 
irremediable blunder, and he rushed to the hierarchy and flung 
their money back to them, and went out appalled, horror-stricken, 
heart-broken, strangling with his emotions, and fell down dead. 
This figurative rendering seems to be the only reasonable method 
of harmonizing the two accounts. 

We are not to apologize for Judas, nor add unwarrantably to 
his badness, but strive to find out what he was. 
He was an average politician. He was audacious ^fj"^ ° ° 
rather than treacherous. He believed that the 
cause of Jesus needed the hand of policy to steady it and push it 



612 THE LAST WEEK. 

forward. He dared to take out of the hand of the Master what waa 
the work of the Master, and he perished in the attempt. His ruin 
was caused by the impatience and pride of his utter worldliness. 
But for his impatient policy he never would have consulted with 
the church party. But for his impatient pride he would have led 
a life of penitence which would have restored him. It was through 
his worldliness and not through his sagacity that the devil entered 
into him. Peter did quite as basely as he ; but Peter repented and 
lived to recover himself. If social damage had not seemed to 
the worldliness of Judas the greatest of all evils, repentance 
might have brought recovery to him as it did to Peter. 

The fourth day of the week began on Tuesday evening and 
closed on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday evening Judas prob- 
ably had his interview with the church autho- 
April a.d 30 rities. Then Jesus went with his disciples to 
Bethany. The temporary absence of Judas would 
scarcely have been noticed by the other disciples, as he must 
have been accustomed to be absent in his attendance on the 
" temporalities " of the body. History is silent on this Wednesday. 
There is not an intimation of any movement upon the part of the 
authorities or of Jesus. He seems to have gone into profound 
retirement. There is no notice of any communication even with 
his disciples. It is a strange calm stealing in between the commo- 
tion of the preceding and the storm of the succeeding days. 
Jesus evidently felt his position, and knew all that was going for- 
ward. We may fancy the thoughts and feelings of such a head 
and such a heart as his, but there is no history. 



CHAPTER Y, 



THE FIFTH DAY — FKOM WEDNESDAY EVENING TO THURSDAY EVENING. 

The fifth day of the week began on Wednesday evening, and 
closed on Thursday evening. It was the first day of unleavened 

bread, when the Passover must be killed. The 
leavened bread Passover was the feast commemorative of the 

deliverance of the nation from the Egyptian 
bondage. The history of its appointment and method of observ- 
ance are given in Exod. xii. The feast was celebrated by compa- 
nies, numbering not less than ten nor more than twenty. In be- 
half of the whole company, one, as a representative, presented the 
lamb in the Temple to be sacrificed by the Levites. It was then 
carried to the house where the party was assembled, and eaten; 
and if they could not consume it before daylight they were to 
burn the remainder. Jesus was approached by his disciples, to 
know where he would have them prepare for his eating of the 
Passover. 

There is no point in the chronology of the career of Jesus which 
has elicited more controversy than the question on what evening 
Jesus ate the Passover. To repeat all that has been written on this 
subject would be to produce another volume larger than this, and, 
after all, the discrepancy between the statements of John and 
those of the other biographers seems to be as far from being har- 
monized as ever.* There is no space to give even a synopsis of 
the arguments, which would require many pages. The result of 
all seems to be that the most rational conclusion is that all the 
Evangelists spoke of one feast; that it was a Paschal supper; that 
Jesus ate that supper with his disciples on Thursday night, the 
evening following the 14th Nisan, April 6, a.tt. 783, a.d. 30, being 
the evening from which, according to Jewish calculation, began 
the sixth day, Friday, 15th Nisan. 



* Readers who have abundance of 
time may find this question amply dis- 
cussed in Andrews's Life of our Lord, 



Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Greas- 
well's Dissertations, and a note in Cros- 
by's Jesus, p. 429. 



614 THE LAST WEEK. 

During the day, before the evening, in reply to his disciples, 
Jesus sent Peter and John to prepare for the eating of the Pass- 
over Supper. He said, "On your entering the 
Preparation for it man ghall meet bearing a pitcher ; f ol- 

the Supper, . " ' . . . , , J . ?. , , 

Thursday 6th *- ow mm mto tne nouse mto which he enters. 

April, a.d. 30. And you shall speak to the Master of the house, 

saying, i The Teacher says to you, My time is at 
hand. Where is the guest-chamber, where I may eat the Pass- 
over with my disciples ? ' And he shall show you a large upper 
room, cushioned ; and there make ready." There need be very 
little speculation upon the mysteriousness of this message. Those 
who are so materialistic that any narrative not totally common- 
place bears internal evidence of its untruth, will reject this por- 
tion of the history, as they will that of the sending for the ass's 
colt in Bethphage. Those who accept it are able to believe in 
the psychology of the New Testament, and will have no difficul- 
ties. Men's powers of inspection, circumspection, and transpec- 
tion differ. Jesus had them all in an extraordinary measure. He 
knew what was working in Judas. He knew that he had pledged 
himself to indicate his Master in such a way that the authorities 
might take him without raising a multitude. That was all the 
priests desired. That was all Judas was to do. But Jesus, while 
marching forward in the line on which his fate lay, would not 
precipitate himself thereupon. He would not put in the hands 
of Judas, who was watching, such information as might be used 
to break up the Paschal Supper. Jesus determined to eat that 
with his disciples. His clear spiritual sight enabled him to talk 
of the man with the pitcher of water, and the house he should en- 
ter, and the owner thereof, as if all, down to the cushions in the 
guest-chamber, were present before his eyes, as in some sense they 
certainly must have been. The disciples found all as he had 
described. 

It is not known who was this citizen of Jerusalem in whose 
lumse Jesus ate this Supper. He was some secret friend of Jesus. 

There is no sign of bargain in advance. It was 
At whose house? ^ nec essary. It was the custom to furnish room 
for the Passover gratis. The rule was to leave the earthen jugs 
and the skins of the sacrificed animals for the host, but he took 
no pay. The trouble in the mind of the disciples seems to have 
been that they had postponed finding a place until it might be 



THE FIFTH DAY. 



61b 



exceedingly difficult to do so. But the calm Jesus knew just 
where to send them. Thronged and crowded as the city was, he 
knew a secret adherent, a friend to " The Master," who would 
gladly open his house for him, and who, strangely, had a vacant 
chamber ready. All this displays more than even extraordinary 
sagacity on the part of Jesus. • 

The disciples made ready. The law was that the Paschal lamb 
was to be slain " between the evenings." Tin's phrase has had a 
variety of meanings assigned by the Jewish writ- 
ers. In the times of Josephus {Bell. Jud., vi. 9, 3), 
the Pharisees held that the first evening began 
when the sun declined towards the horizon, the second at sunset 
Some, however, taught that the phrase included the time from a 
little before to a little after sunset. The Samaritans and Karaites 
interpreted it to mean from sunset to dark. It was probably about 
three o'clock that the lamb was slain, and before six that the sup- 
per was eaten. 



" Between the 
evenings." 




CHAPTER VI. 



THE SIXTH DAY FROM THURSDAY EVENING TO FRIDAY EVENING. 



Section 1. — The Supper. 



\ 



At the appointed hour they entered the chamber, and Jesus 

said to them, " With desire I have desired to eat this Passover 

with you before I suffer ; for I say to you that I 
Thursday even- win not eafc thereo f until the time when it shall 

a d 30 Jesus's ^ e ^ u^Ued i n tne kingdom of God." This was 
opening speech. said, perhaps, while they were standing, as the 
ceremony of the Passover was to remind them of 
their night out of Egypt. They were about to recline at the ta- 
ble, and then arose the old question of precedence, who should be 
first. It might have been the attraction of love. Jesus was so 
melancholy, yet so serene. He was growing sublimely beautiful. 
Who should sit next him % But they waxed warm, and the feel- 
ing was not generous. It ran rather in the channel of Oriental 
etiquette, the position at the table being important. 

It was somehow settled at last, John being next to him on one 

side, and most probably Judas on the other. It was customary at 

this feast to have four cups of wine mixed with 

He gives them water> ^nd Jesus took one of these cups, and 
the wine and the . . . . 

bread having given thanks, he gave it to his disciples, 

saying, " Take and divide this among yourselves, 

for I say to you, that I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of the 

vine until the kingdom of God shall come." After they had been 

eating some time, he took bread, and having given thanks, he broke 

it, and gave it to them, saying, " This is my body, which is about 

to be given in behalf of you : this do in remembrance of me." 

Then, after they had eaten, he took the cup, and gave it to them, 

saying, " This cup is the New Testament in my blood, now to be 

poured forth in behalf of you ! " 

This seemed designed to appropriate to himself what was 



THE SIXTH DAY. 617 

typical in the unleavened bread, and in the mingled wine and 
water of the Paschal feast. Whenever they celebrated the Pass- 
over they were to remember him. He seems to intimate that a 
thought of him was wrapped up in the Passover idea. Might it 
not also mean that, whenever they should eat bread and drink 
wine, under any circumstances, they should have remembrance oi 
him \ It was this tender injunction which led his followers to in- 
stitute w r hat is so appropriately called " The Lord's Supper." 

Jesus then rose from the table, laid aside his outer garment, 
took a basin of water and a towel, and proceeded to wash the feet 
of his disciples, and to wipe them with the towel. 
When men came off a journey it was the custom „ e was es 
for the host to have their feet washed, and this 
service was ordinarily performed by a slave. It has been sug- 
gested that in the hurry and crowd of the festival, and in prepar- 
ing his own Passover, the host had on this occasion omitted this 
attention, and that the dispute as to who should be greatest arose 
among the disciples on the point of the feet washing. But as the 
Passover was to be eaten with staves in their hands and all the 
preparations for a journey, it would scarcely seem necessary that 
the feet should have been washed on this occasion. At any rate 
Jesus found reason in their disputings to teach them an impres- 
sive lesson of love's humility. 

When he came to Simon Peter, that vehement disciple broke 
forth, " Do you wash my feet % " Jesus said, " What I am doing 
you do not perceive now, but you shall understand 
hereafter." He w T as not to be put off so. The 
old impetuous self-will broke forth, " You shall never wash my 
feet." It was " the pride that apes humility." He would have 
it his own way. He had better ideas of propriety than his Mas- 
ter ! Jesus brought him to terms by the calm statement, " If I 
do not wash you, you have no part with me." Suddenly the im- 
petuous self-will of Peter new to the opposite extreme. If that 
was the case nothing would satisfy him but a regular bath. He 
exclaimed, " Not my feet only, but also the hands and the head ! " 
There was no need of any such immersion, and Jesus said, " He that 
is bathed needs not to wash, but is wholly clean." And turning to 
his disciples he said, "And you are clean — but not all." The re- 
ply to Peter seems to signify that this feet washing was not a 
sacrament, not a " means of grace," as such things are called, not 



618 THE LAST WEEK. 

a cleansing ceremonial. If the disciples were not pure in heait 
his washing of their feet would not cleanse them. It did not 
cleanse Judas and Peter, who shortly after outraged all truth and 
decency in his betrayal and denial. 

When this was done he resumed his garments and his seat at 
the table, and said, " Do you know what I have done to you 1 
You call me 'The Teacher,' and 'The Lord;' 
and you speak gracefully : for I am. If then I, 
the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to 
wash one another's feet ; for I have given you an example that as 
I have done for you, you also should do. I most assuredly say to 
you that the slave is not greater than his Lord, nor the [Apostle] 
sent greater than he who has sent him. If you know these things, 
you are happy if you do them. I do not speak of you all : I 
know whom I have chosen ; but the Scripture may be fulfilled : 
* He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.' * 
Now I tell you, before it come to pass, that when it is come to 
pass you may know that I am. Most assuredly I say to you, He 
who receives whomsoever I send receives me ; and he who re- 
ceives me receives Him who sent me.'' 

It seems impossible to read this whole history without feeling 
that Jesus knew all his circumstances and read the spirits of all 
about him. He knew that Judas would secretly 
. . betray him, so that the church party might quiet- 

ly take him without arousing a popular demon- 
stration in his favor. Whatever might be his knowledge of the 
case, if he should seem to have as implicitly trusted Judas as the 
others, and if his betrayal should afterwards seem to his disciples 
to have been as unexpected to him as it certainly was to them, 
their faith would be shaken. But to indicate the betrayer would 
be to exasperate the disciples against him, to precipitate matters, 
and to surrender his own dignity. Not a moment of petty pas- 
sion or of towering wrath broke on the sky-like loftiness and 
purity of this wonderful soul. He went just far enough to save 
their faith from a prodigious shock. 

As they sat and did eat he was sad and troubled in spirit. He 
had spoken of the mission of his disciples, and the blessedness of 
those who received his friends. But he could not bear that the 
benediction should go to Judas, and so he made a Scriptural quo- 

* Psalm xli. 9. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 



619 



The self -inspec- 
tion of the Apos- 
tles. 



tation which should show that he discriminated. He added, " I 
most assuredly say to you that one of you, now eating with me, 
shall betray me." This fearful speech filled them 
with terrible suspicions. They looked at one an- 
other, perhaps running over in memory the inci- 
dents of their companionship to ascertain who might have shown 
signs of a baseness capable of committing so hideous an act. 
There was nothing. No suspicion pointed to Judas. He was as 
little likely as any to perform an act so execrable. 

Then they began self-inspection. Each man searched his own 
heart to see what root there was in him that might so suddenly 
spring up and bear such a poisonous fruit. But 
no one would allow such a dire possibility to him- 
self. Then one after another they began to mur- 
mur, " Lord, is it I ? Lord, is it I ? " He re- 
plied, " He who dips the hand with me in the dish, he shall 
betray me. The Son of Man indeed is going, as it is written of 
him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is be 
trayed ! It were good for that man if he had not been born ! " 

Next to Jesus sat John, who is fond of designating himself as 
" the disciple whom Jesus loved," although none of the other histo 
rians show any partiality on the part of Jesus. 
Peter was at some distance. He signed to John to 
ask Jesus who it was that should betray him. He did ask him, and 
Jesus answered, but perhaps in a tone that the others could not hear, 
" He it is, to whom, having dipped the sop, I shall give it." He 
dipped the " sop" and gave it to Judas, who seems to have been sitting 
on his other side. Then he faltered out, " Rabbi, what, am I he ? " 

It would seem that Judas did not intend to betray him that night. 
Nor is it probable that his plan was to do this until after the close 
of the feast. But the proceedings at this supper hastened him. 

Jesus replied, " You have said it. What you do, do quickly." 
No man at the table knew for what intent this had been spoken 
to Judas. Evidently if Peter had known which one it was he 
would have slain him on the spot, for he was a choleric man, and 
had a sword with him ; and although he himself was about to be 
most base, and violate all the sanctity of his friendship for Jesus 
quite as much as Judas, yet he did not know that, and he was a 
rash man, although destitute of moral courage. So none of the 
company knew the intent of the communication which Jesus 



Am I he? 



620 THE LAST WEEK. 

made to Judas, and when he arose and left them may they not 

have supposed that the Master had sent him out on some errand % 

" It was night," says John. In every sense it was night. The 

daylight had gone away from the tops of " the mountains round 

about Jerusalem," and darkness was settling 
Judas leaves. n -. ., . , 1 , k , 

deeply on the ravines and gardens around the 

city. The little band of followers were groping in a perplexity 

like midnight. It was night in the soul of Judas ; such dark 

night as utterly bewildered him. He had laid his plans in utter 

worldliness. He was being hurried up and disconcerted. The 

men he had left in the upper chamber were simple, unworldly 

souls, and he was sagacious. He had at least a plan ; they none. 

He had gone thus far with it. Should he go forward ? Should 

he go back \ Was there any reason to recede from the position he 

had taken % Why should he go back ? Did Jesus mean to urge him 

on by what he said ? It may have flashed upon his mind that perhaps 

Jesus did. When men have set themselves to a theory everything 

favors it. Judas had forgotten the fearful " woe " just uttered. He 

must have felt himself out of sympathy with the other disciples. 

The very looks and tones of Jesus must have perturbed him. But 

going forward might be failure and ruin. He was in a storm of 

conflicting emotions and motives. Satan had him. " It was night." 

After Judas had left, Jesus said, " Now the Son of Man is glo- 
rified, and God is glorified in him. And God shall glorify him in 
Himself, and shall immediately glorify him. Little children, yet 
a short time I am with you. You shall seek me ; and, as I said 
to the Jews, where I go you cannot gome ; and now I say to you. 
A new commandment I give to you, That you love one another ; 
as I have loved you, you also shall love one another. By this 
shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one 
for another." 

Peter said, u Lord, where are you going \ " He could not even 
apprehend the idea that Jesus would die. The whole discourse 
of Jesus about his departure was a perplexing 
riddle to his disciples. It seemed as if he were 
going off somewhere to have a terrible conflict. This was con- 
firmed when Jesus answered, " Where I go you cannot follow me 
now, but you shall follow me afterwards." Peter persisted : 
" Lord, why cannot I follow you now ? I will lay down my life 
for you ! " Jesus replied : " Will you lay down your life for me % 



THE SIXTH DAY. 



621 



I most assuredly say to you, The cock shall not crow till you have 
thrice denied that you know me." 

Then he said to his disciples : " You shall all be offended in me 
this night ; for it is written, ' I will smite the Shepherd, and the 
sheep of the flock shall be scattered.'* But after I am risen 
again I will go before you into Galilee." Peter again responded 
still more vehemently : " If all shall be offended in you, yet will 
not I. Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you ! " And 
Jesus said to him, " Simon, Satan has acquired you,f to sift you 
as wheat : but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. 
And when you have turned strengthen your brethren." Then to 
all the disciples, " When I sent you without purse, or wallet, or 
sandals, did you want anything P They said, " Nothing." "But 
now," said he, " he that has a purse, let him take it, and likewise 
his wallet : and he who has no knife, let him sell his garment and 
buy one. For I say to you, that that which is written must be ac- 
complished in me, ' And he was numbered with the law-break- 
ers.' X Also that concerning me has an end." § 

His disciples informed him that there were two swords in the 
chamber. Jesus said, " Enough is," as perhaps we should say, 
" Enough of this." 

He was simply striving to impress upon their minds that there 
was to be a change ; that whereas they went out formerly with 
perfect safety, and the assurance that his name 

A pY\ *vn o*a T"n*f*- 

would be a passport to them everywhere, because dicted & 
it was in the palmy days of his great popularity, 
a change was to come because he was going away, and his name 
was to be coupled with ignominy. The stupidity of these simple 
men is annoying to us ; but we are to remember that we carry 
back to the inspection of their words and acts the light which 



* Zechariah xiii. 7. 

f The force of the Greek middle in 
this passage is noticed by Gresswell. It 
signifies not merely that Satan desired 
to have, but had actually got possession 
of the Apostles, that they had been 
given up to him to sift. He had got 
out Judas, and was like to get out Peter ; 
but Jesus was praying for him. In the 
original the pronoun is in the plural in 
the first, and singular in the second sec- 
tion of the sentence. " Satan has re- 



quired you Apostles to sift you ; but I 
have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy 
faith," etc. It was too late for Judas, 
and the other Apostles were not in so 
much peril as Peter, whose tempera- 
ment particularly exposed him. 

X Isaiah liii. 12. 

§ Olshausen's interpretation of this 
seems good : " What stands written oi 
me, as regards this earthly life, with 
all which it involves, is being fulfilled.' 



622 



THE LAST WEEK. 



subsequent events have afforded, and that we lack the deep im 
pression on their minds made by personally witnessing repeated 
miracles which had made Jesus seem to them to be invulnerable 
to human attacks. If he was going to have trouble, they were 
ready to fight ; and when he went into details of purse and wallet 
and traveller's-knife, the last seemed to them to indicate a con- 
flict. It was customary for the Galilseans to travel armed. Peter 
wore his sword ; and it seems that another disciple also had come 
in with his. But two swords against the combined forces of the 
Jewish hierarchy and the Roman power seemed so preposterous 
to Jesus that he said, " Enough of this ! " 

The perturbation of the disciples must have been very great. 
To soothe them, Jesus in most artless, charming, and affectionate 

words said, "Let not your hearts be disturbed. 

Believe: iu God and in me believe.* In the 
house of my Father the mansions are many. But if not, I would 
have told you ; because f I go that I may prepare a place for you. 
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and 
will receive you to myself ; that where I am there you may be 
also!" Nothing could be more tender between men. If he 
paused a moment, thinking of the meeting in the spiritual world 
after all the trials and conflicts of this, he added very soon, " And 
where I go you know the way." Thomas, the honest and despon- 
dent skeptic, said, " Lord, we do not know where you are going ; 
and how can we know the way % " Jesus answered him, " I am the 
way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except 
through me. If you had known me you should have known my 
Father also ; and henceforth you know Him and have seen Him." 



* For the benefit of readers who know 
nothing of Greek, it is proper to say, 
what scholars know, that this verb in 
the original (pisteuete) is the same in 
the indicative and in the imperative, 
and that we have the ancient MSS. with- 
out punctuation. This gives us choice 
of many readings. 1. That of the com- 
mon version, ' ' Ye believe in God ; be- 
lieve also in me." where it is rendered as 
indicative in the first clause, and im- 
perative in the second. 2. That which 
I have chosen above, where both are 
imperative, and a slight difference in 



punctuation gives a great difference in 
sense. 3. " You believe in God and 
you believe in me." But the trouble 
was that their faith in God and in Jesus 
was weakening. 4. '"Believe in God, 
then you will believe in me." In the 
rendering which I have chosen the con- 
sistency of tenses is maintained. The 
first Trio-revere, pisteuete, is, as it were 
the text of this consolatory discourse. 

•f This passage might bear the follow- 
ing translation : ' ' But if not, I would 
not have told you that I go to prepare 
a place for you." 



THE SIXTH DAT. 



623 



Philip, leaning towards materialism and demanding evidences 
of which his senses might take cognizance, now says, " Lord, show 
us the Father and it is sufficient for us." Jesus 
answered, " Am I so long time with you, and yet rialism 
have you not known me, Philip ? He who has 
seen me has seen the Father, * and how then do you say, ' Show 
us the Father?' Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and 
the Father is in me ? The words which I speak to you, I speak not 
of myself ; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. f 
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. But if 
not, believe the works themselves. I most assuredly say to you, 
He who believes on me, the works that I do, shall he do also, and 
greater than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.^ 
And whatsoever you shall ask in my name that will I do, that the 
Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask me anything 
in my name, I will do it. If you love me, keep my command- 
ments, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another 
Advocate,§ that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth, 
which the world is not able to receive, because it does not see it nor 
know it. You know it, for it dwells with you and shall be in you." 

" I will not leave you orphans. I am coming to you. Yet a 
little while and the world sees me no more; but you see me. 
Because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know 
that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who 
has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me ; 
and he who loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love 
him and will manifest myself to him.''' 

Here occurred another interruption, showing how deeply planted 



* If this reply does not make a dis- 
tinct and explicit claim to divinity on 
the part of Jesus, it would seem ex- 
ceedingly difficult to frame a proposi- 
tion in Greek or English, which could. 
Whether the claim be well founded is 
a question for another department ; but 
the historian is obliged to record that 
Jesus claimed to be TnE Father of 
the "Universe, the unoriginated God. 

f Not as a human being, but as a 
God, he claims to speak his marvellous 
words and do his miraculous acts. 

X "Which simply means that moral 



works are greater than miracles, being 
an imperishable plane concerned with 
spirit and not with matter, always bene- 
ficent, and involving not simply divine 
autocratic volition, but such divine 
power of truth as moves the free-will 
of men. 

§ A legal term. Jesus had been the 
assistant of his disciples, standing up 
for them and defending him ; after his 
departure, the Spirit of Truth which 
should dwell in them, and in every 
emergency assist them, should be theii 
Advocate. 



624 



THE LAST WEEK. 



Thaddeus puz 
zled. 



in the minds of the Apostles was the idea of a splendid temporal 
reign of the Messiah. Judas Thaddeus (Matt. x. 3), " not Iscariot," 
was puzzled at the thought of a Messiah who should 
limit the display of his glory to the small circle 
of his immediate followers. He asked, " Lord, and 
how is it that you are about to manifest yourself to us and not to the 
world ? " — meaning the whole world. To make him comprehend 
in some measure the spirituality of his teachings, Jesus replied, — ■ 

" If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, 
and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not 
love me, does not keep my commandments. And the word which you hear 
is not mine, but the Father's, who sent me. But the Advocate, the Holy 
Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, 
and remind you of all things that I have said to you. 

" Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you ; not as the world gives, 
do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 
You have heard that I said to you, that I am going away and am coming to 
you. If you loved me, you would rejoice because I go to the Father ; for my 
Father is greater than I.* And now I have told you before it come to pass, 
that, when it has come to pass, you might believe. No longer will I talk 
much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and in me he has 
nothing, f But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the 
Father has commanded me so I do, arise, let us go hence." 

Section 2. — Valedictory and Last Prayer. 

It was probably at this point that they sang some portion or 
the whole of the Great Hallel, which comprised the cxv., cxvi., 
cxvii., and cxviii. Psalms. Maimonides (De So- 
crif. jPasch., viii. 14) says that it was sung while 
the Paschal lamb was being eaten. But it does not appear to 
have been confined so strictly to any particular portion of the 
feast. A part may have been sung now and a part then. Jesus 
resumed his discourse in the chamber, after the Hallel, or else 
when they had passed the city walls, and before they had crossed 



The Hallel. 



* In this he seems to draw a distinc- 
tion between the merely human soul 
which made him a man and the eternal 
Godhead which he believed to exist in 
his nature, which was the greater part of 
-.iim, and which was that that spoke the 
words and wrought the miracles which 
he represented as done by the Father. 

f Simply meaning that all the power 



in the world could avail nothing against 
him, if he did not freely and voluntari- 
ly surrender himself. The God that 
was in him marked out a course for the, 
Man that was in him, and he intended 
to follow it. But the world, and the 
prince or ruler of the world, must never 
for a moment fancy that it or he had 
conquered Jesus. 



THE SIXTH DAT. 625 

the Kedron. He did not hurry. He had lingered in the cham- 
ber delivering a consolatory discourse to his disciples, and now he 
walked slowly, or paused and stood, and talked with them. He knew 
what Judas was doing, and he neither hastened nor retarded events. 
It is not known what suggested the opening of the out-door dis- 
courses, if the remainder of this discourse was delivered in the 
open air. They may have been passing vineyards ; Nature was 
perpetually inspiring the speeches of Jesus. He resumed : — 

" I am the vine, the true one, and my Father is the husbandman. Every 
branch in me not bearing fruit, He removes it, and every branch bearing fruit 
He prunes it that it may bear more fruit. Already ye are 
clean through the word which I have spoken to you. 
Abide in me and I in you. As the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine, so cannot you, except you abide in me. I am the 
vine, you the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, the same bears 
much fruit ; for without me you can do nothing. If any one do not abide in 
me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; and they gather it and cast 
it into the fire, and it is burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in 
you, whatsoever things you wish, seek, and it shall be done to you. In this is 
my Father glorified that you bear much fruit, and become my disciples. As 
the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you 
keep my commandments you shall abide in my love ; even as I also have kept 
my Father's commandments and abide in His love. 

" These things have I spoken to you that my joy might abide in you, and 
your joy might be made full. This is my commandment, That you love one 
another as I have loved you. Greater love than this has no man. that he lay 
down his life for his friend. You are my friends, if you do whatever I com- 
mand you. 

" No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his lord 
is doing. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard 
from my Father I have made known to you. You have not chosen me, but I 
have chosen you, and appointed you, that you shall go and bear fruit, and that 
your fruit shall remain ; that whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name 
He may give it to you. 

" These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world 
hate you, you know that it hated me first. If you were of the world, the 
world would love its own ; but because you are not of the world, but I have 
chosen you out of the world, on this account the world hates you. Remem- 
ber the word which I have spoken to you, The slave is not greater than his 
lord. If they persecuted me they will also persecute you. If they have kept 
my word they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you, 
on account of my name, because they do not know Him who sent me. 

" If I had not come and spoken to them they would not have sin ; but now 
they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father also. If 
I had not done among them works which no other man has done, they would 
40 



626 THE LAST WEEK. 

not have sin. But now have they both seen and hated both me and my 
Father. But that it might be fulfilled, the word which in their law is written 
of them, 'They hated me causelessly.'* But when the Advocate is come, 
whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth which proceeds 
from the Father, he shall testify concerning me. And you also shall bear wit- 
ness, because you have been with me from the beginning. 

" These things have I spoken to you that you should not be offended. For 
they shall make you excommunicated ; more, the hour is coming that who- 
ever kills you will think that he offers a service to God, And these things 
will they do to you, because they have not known the Father nor me. But 
these things have I told you that when the hour shall come you may remem- 
ber that I spoke of them ; and these things I did not say to you at the begin- 
ning, because I was with you. 

" But now I am going away to Him who sent me, and none of you asks me 
1 Whither are you going ? ' But because I have said those things to you, sor- 
row has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is profitable 
to you that I go away. For if I go not away the Advocate will not come. 
But if I depart I will send him to you. And when he is come he will convict 
the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, because 
they do not believe in me ; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and 
you see me no more ; and of judgment, because the ruler of this world is 
judged. 

" Many things yet have I to say to you, but you cannot bear them ; but when 
he the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide yon in the truth, for he shall not 
speak from out of himself, but whatever he hears he shall speak ; and he 
will tell you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of 
mine and announce to you. All things that the Father has are mine. There- 
fore I said that he takes of mine and shall announce to you. 

"A little while and you shall not see me ; and again a little while and you 
shall see me." 

Then said some of his disciples among themselves : " What is 
this that he is saying to us, ' A little while and ye shall see me no 
m.ore, and again a little while and ye shall see 
me : and, Because I go to the Father f ' what is 
this ' little while \ ' We do not understand what he is saying." 
Jesus knew that they were about to ask him, and anticipated them 
by resuming : — 

"Do you inquire among yourselves because I said, A little while and you 

shall not see me, and again a little while and you shall see me ? I most 

assuredly say to you, That you shall weep and lament, but 

the world shall rejoice. You shall be sorrowful, but your 

(sorrow shall De turned into joy. A woman when she is about to bring forth 

hath sorrow, because her hour is come ; but when she has given birth to the 

* See Psalm xxxv. 19, and lxix. 4. 



THE SIXTH DAT. 627 

child she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a man is born into the 
world. And ye, therefore, now indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again, 
and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one takes from you. 

"And in that day you shall ask me nothing. I most assuredly say to you, 
Whatever you shall ask the Father in my name, He shall give it to you. 
Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you shall receive, 
that your joy may be made full. These things have I spoken to you in pro- 
verbs : the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs, 
but I shall tell you plainly concerning the Father. In that day you shall ask 
in my name ; and I do not say to you that I will pray the Father for you, for 
the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed 
that I came from God. I came forth from the Father, and have come into 
the world : again I leave the world and go to the Father." 

Some one of his disciples said to him : " Now you are speaking 
in frankness, and not speaking a proverb. Now we know that 
you know all things, and have no need that any 
one should ask you. By this we believe that you belief 
came forth from God." Jesus answered : " Do 
you now believe % Behold, the hour is coming, and the hour has 
come, that you shall be scattered, every one to his own, and shall 
leave me alone. And I am not alone, because the Father is with 
me. These things have I spoken to you, that in me you might 
have peace. In the world you have anguish ; but be courageous, 
I have conquered the world ! " 

Then Jesus lifted up his eyes and prayed audibly, while the dis- 
ciples must have listened in perplexity and awe. And this is the 
prayer as John records it : — 

" O Father, the hour has come. Glorify Thy Son that Thy Son may glorify 
Thee. As Thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give per- 
petual life to every one whom Thou hast given him. And 
this is the perpetual life, that they might know Thee the The Prayer of Jesu3 - 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee 
on the earfh. I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. 

" And now glorify Thou me, O Father, with Thyself by the glory which I had 
with Thee before the world was. I have shown Thy name to the men whom 
Thou gavest me out of the world. They were Thine, and Thou gavest them 
to me. And they have kept Thy word. Now they know that all things, what- 
ever Thou hast given me, are from Thee, for I have given theni the words Thou 
gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came 
out from Thee ; and they have believed that Thou didst send me. I pray for 
them. For the world I pray not, but for those whom Thou hast given me ; 
for they are tliine. And Thou hast given them to me, and I am glorified in 



THE LAST WEEK. 

them. And I am no longer in the world, and these are in the world, and I am 
coming to Thee. 

" O Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, whom Thou hast given me, that 
they may be one as we. When I was with them I kept them in Thy name 
and guarded them, and not one of them is lost, except the son of perdition, 
that the Scripture might be fulfilled. And now I am coming to Thee, and 
these things I am speaking in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled 
in themselves. I have given them Thy word, and the world has hated them 
because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not 
pray that Thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou wouldst 
keep them from evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the 
world. Make them holy in the truth: Thy word is truth. As Thou hast 
sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their 
sakes I make myself holy that they also may be made holy in the truth. 

" But not for these alone do I pray, but for those also who believe on me 
through their word, that they all may be one, even as Thou art in me and 
I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that 
Thou has sent me. And the glory which Thou hast given me I have given 
them, that they may be one, even as we : I in them, and Thou in me, that 
they may be made perfect in one ; and that the world may know that Thou 
didst send me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me. 

" O Father, that which Thou hast given me I will that where I am they 
also may be with me, that they may behold my glory, which Thou hast given 
me ; for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. 

" O righteous Father, the world also has not known Thee, but I have 
known Thee, and these have known that Thou didst send me. Thy name 
I both have made known to them, and will make it known, that the love 
wherewith Thou hast loved them may be in them, and I in them ! " 



Section 3. — Gethsemane. 

Perhaps at the close of this prayer they sang another portion of 
the Great Ilallel. Then they went to the Mount of Olives, cross- 
ing the brook Kedron, the name signifying " Mud- 
TheKedronval- , & -> , „ Ti _ , ,, ,? J , ^ , , . 

. ay Jorook. It was probably through what is 

called St. Stephen's Gate that Jesus and his 
band passed down and crossed the Kedron, which runs about 200 
feet from the city walls. On the slope of the Mount of Olives, 
which rises herefrom, and near the road leading on to Bethany, 
was the Garden of Gethsemane, meaning an " oil-press," — the 
garden having derived its name most probably from an oil-press 
which belonged to the estate. Whether we now know the precise 
spot where Jesus was in agony, and where he was betrayed, is 



THE SIXTH DAT. 



somewhat uncertain ; but it is quite certain that it could not have 
been far from the plot which the Latin Church has recently 
bought and enclosed. We cannot say that the eight venerable 
trees, which are so impressive to all travellers, were standing in 
the days of Jesus. It is probable that they were not, as Josephus 
informs us that Titus cut down all the trees round about Jerusa 
lem (B. J., vi. 1, 1), and that the Tenth Legion were posted about 






KIDRON VALLEY. FROM AKELDAMA. 



the Mount of Olives (v. 2, 3, and vi. 2, 8). But these trees must' 
have been planted very early by the hands of those who, cherish- 
ing the memory of Jesus, desired to mark the traditionary spot. 
Dr. Thomson is inclined to place the garden in the secluded vale 
several hundred yards to the north-east of the present Gethsemane. 
In any case it was near the city, and Judas and the other disci- 
ples knew that Jesus was accustomed to frequent it for private de- 
votion. 



630 THE LAST WEEK. 

Having entered Gethsemane a great heaviness fell on him, and 
he said to his disciples : " Sit down and pray that you do not en- 
ter into temptation, while I go and pray yonder." 
gar n. ^ ^^ w ^h. him Peter and the two sons of 
Zebedee, James and John. They walked farther into the garden. 
He began to be sorrowful, and terrified, and depressed. They 
must have perceived it, but he opened his heart to these friends 
and said : " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ; 
remain here and watch with me." It seemed to be a sense of 
abandonment coming upon him. "Nameless contrarieties of 
sensation overwhelmed him, and choked and straitened his heart, 
as if they would have stifled and killed him." His appeal to his 
three friends is very pathetic. 

He went a little farther from the three disciples, about a stone's 
throw. He had probably, as Dean Alford conjectures, gone with 
his three friends into a portion of the garden from which the 
moonlight would be excluded by the rocks and buildings on the 
opposite side of the gorge. It was the vernal equinox, and this 
must have been near midnight, so the moon, being two days from 
its full, would be able to cast shadows thus. As his anguish 
deepened he went into the deepest gloom of the garden. 

He kneeled down, he fell upon his face, he prayed. His prayer 

was : " O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; 

yet, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." How long 

Solitary prayer. , . , --. ° 

he thus agonized we cannot know. J3ut he must 

have had some comfort from his prayer, for after some time he 
returned to the three disciples and found them all asleep. The 
travel and excitement of the day had proved too much for them. 
They certainly did not comprehend the crisis which had come in the 
affairs of Jesus. He addressed Peter with the intensely pathetic 
appeal, " What, could you not watch with me one hour ? Eise, 
watch and pray, that you do not enter into temptation. The spirit 
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He left his poor, heavy- 
eyed, and exhausted friends, and went back and prayed, saying : 
" O my Father, if this may not pass away except I drink it, Thy 
will be done." 

He came the second time to his disciples and found them all 

asleep. Down on his soul fell a great horror of 
A horror. 1 , ° 

desertion. It was past the midnight. Over the 

hill in Bethany, Lazarus and Martha and Mary, and perhaps his 



THE SIXTH DAT. 631 

own mother, for she was at the feast, were sleeping. In front 
lay Jerusalem, the moon sailing on above and beyond the city, 
whose walls on this side grew darker from top to bottom ; and 
within those walls they were plotting to destroy him without fair 
trial. Judas had left him on an errand that was to be disastrous. 
Here lay Peter, James, and John, asleep, near his scene of un- 
speakable anguish. There lay the other eight, asleep also. His 
country was under the Roman, whose garrison filled yonder 
tower of Antonia. The church was arrayed against him. His 
mother was away, and Mary Magdalen, his true friend. He 
was alone. 

He staggered back and fell upon the ground, and the third 
time he prayed this prayer of exquisite pain and perfect submis- 
sion. The horror of his position lay heavy on 
, . T i • i j ^ The sweat of 

him. In his agony he prayed more earnestly ; blood 

and his sweat was as it were clots of blood falling 
down to the ground. His friends afterward believed that an 
angel appeared to him and gave him succor. That he was 
strengthened, and his serenity in some measure restored, appears 
from the tone of his address to his disciples, and by his whole 
bearing in what immediately followed. He said : " Do you sleep 
on now and rest." Then he suddenly said: "It is enough. Be- 
hold, the hour is here, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the 
hands of sinners. Rise ; let us go. See, he that betrays me is 
here ! " 

And while he was speaking these words, Judas, who knew the 
place, and knew that it was a resort of Jesus and his disciples, 
probably having sought him in vain in the cham- 
ber where he had left him, came upon the party. 
He was accompanied by a band of men whom he had received 
from the chief priests and Pharisees. They were not all Roman 
soldiers, but some were servants of the priests and some were 
members of the Sanhedrim. They had no official authority to do 
as they did. They were the minions of the church party. 

This brings us to an examination of what a learned Jewish 
physician, M. Salvador, of Paris, pronounces " the most memo- 
rable trial in all history." This writer produced a work, entitled 
The Institutions of Moses and the Hebrew People. At his own 
request, M. Dupin the elder, a French lawyer of distinction, 
reviewed the chapter on the " Trial and Condemnation of Jesus." 



632 THE LAST WEEK. 

We shall be indebted to both works, and we make this general ac 
knowledgment to save specific references. Candor ought to com- 
pel any Christian writer to admit that it was not a question of 
" deicide," a name invented to represent an impossible sin, as the 
church party did not believe that Jesus was a God in any sense. 
The simple question is, Did he receive justice as a Hebrew citizen 
under Hebrew law ? 

The Mosaic law provided three securities for justice in a crim- 
inal proceeding, namely, publicity of the trial, entire liberty of 

defence for the accused, and safeguards against 
law false testimony. For the latter there must be at 

least two witnesses. According to the Hebrew 
text, " One witness is no witness." Testimony was rendered un- 
der oath. If a witness against the accused perjured himself, he 
was compelled to undergo the punishment which would have be- 
fallen the accused if he had been convicted. If the accused were 
convicted, the witnesses by whose evidence he perished dealt the 
first blow, in proof of the truth of their testimony. A woman 
could not be a witness, because she might not have the courage 
to deal such a blow. Eo man could testify against himself. The 
testimony was required to be exceedingly specific. The very 
hour, as well as day, place, and circumstances must be mentioned. 
There were twenty-three judges. Those who believed the accused 
to be innocent spoke first, those who believed him guilty spoke 
afterwards, " and with the greatest moderation." The most pro- 
found attention was given to the accused when he wished to 
speak. Of the twenty-three votes eleven would acquit, while it 
required thirteen to condemn. If acquitted, the accused was dis- 
charged instantly; if condemned, the sentence was not pro- 
nounced until the third day. On the third day any judge who 
had been in favor of condemning might change his vote, so as to 
acquit, but one who had once voted for acquittal could not change 
his vote so as to condemn. If, then, at least thirteen judges 
voted for condemnation, the prisoner was led forth slowly. The 
judges remained on the bench. An officer was stationed at the 
door with a flag, while another, on horseback, accompanied the 
prisoner, looking back constantly, as he would be recalled by the 
waving of the flag if any testimony in favor had been brought 
before the judges. On his own declaration that he recalled some 
reasons which had escaped him, the prisoner could be brought 



THE SIXTH DAY. 633 

back to the judges as often as five times. As the procession ad- 
vanced slowly, a herald with a loud voice proclaimed, " This man 
[stating his name and surname] is led to punishment for [here 
the crime was named]. The witnesses who have sworn against 
him are [here their names were recited]. If any one has evi- 
dence in his favor let him come forth and give it quickly." 

This is an epitome of M. Salvador's representation of the ad- 
ministration of criminal law among the Hebrews. We shall now 
see whether Jesus had a fair trial. 

We may recall that, before tampering with Judas, the church 
party had determined that Jesus should die, thus pronouncing 
sentence upon him before any beginning of even 
a show of trial. Then they had appointed emis- 
saries, employing evil men, for none but wicked men, feigning 
themselves to be good, could be engaged in such work, to dog the 
steps of Jesus and entangle him in his talk. There was nothing 
done by Jesus which any one was willing to lay voluntarily be- 
fore the authorities and denounce as a crime against God or social 
order. So far from this, they arrested him before any allegation 
was made, and they did this craftily and stealthily, so that " the 
people " might not know. They desired to postpone the arrest 
until the termination of the Passover should have emptied the 
city of the multitudes from all parts of the country who had 
heard and seen Jesus, not one of whom had accused him of any 
crime, and many of whom might have given testimony in his favor. 
When circumstances hurried up the operations of Judas they 
seized Jesus, rushed him through a mock trial, and crucified him 
in the space of less than ten hours. We shall examine each point 
in the progress of this affair in the light of the Hebrew law as 
stated by M. Salvador, a learned defender of his ancestors and 
their action in the case of Jesus. 

In the first place it was unjust to begin to prosecute, not to say 
persecute, him before any charges had been laid before the Grand 
Council. In the next place it was a gross irregu- 
larity to attempt to take him privately, and not rre ^ ulari ies « 
give him the benefit of all the publicity of a most open trial 
in clear daylight, and not in the night. This was enhanced by 
employing a spy, and bribing him to assist in their unlawful proce- 
dure. They go about to take him without any regular and legal 
Roman or Jewish order for his arrest. The Sanhedrim had had 



634 THE LAST WEEK. 

a conclave, but not a regular sitting, and did not proceed as a 

court of law, but rather as a band of conspirators. They took 

counsel how they might slay him, as John says (xi. 53), not how 

they might administer justice in his case. And I think we shall 

see how the whole procedure was the execution of a foregone 

conclusion, and was the condemnation of a man before trial. 

The signal of Judas was a kiss. He was not to lay hands 

on his Master, nor join this mob in their attack. He was simply 

to designate Jesus, and this was the preconcerted 
The signal. . ° , , . , . , , r . . 

sign, the selection 01 which perhaps intimates 

that Jesus was accustomed to receive this affectionate mode of 
salutation from his apostles, when they had been separated for 
a season. Judas approached him and said, so as to be heard by 
the band, " Hail, Rabbi," and kissed him. The reply of Jesus 
was most mild, and to Judas must have been painfully cutting. 
Matthew repeats it as, " Friend, for what are you here ? " Luke 
says that Jesus said, "Do you betray the Son of Man with 
a kiss?" — and his manner of narrating it might imply that 
Jesus prevented the kiss by the question; but Matthew and 
Mark distinctly affirm that Judas actually kissed Jesus; all 
the historians showing that Jesus knew the intent of this salu- 
tation. 

Upon this Jesus stepped forward to the crowd and said, 
" Whom do you seek \ " They replied, " Jesus the Nazarene." 
He answered, "I am he." What there was of 
majesty, innocence, and spiritual power in his 
presence and reply we may conjecture from the fact that though 
they were all armed, and were many, coming out against a man 
whose friends were few and unprepared for conflict, they stag- 
gered backwards and fell to the ground. Here was a man 
capable of inspiring such awe, and yet never voluntarily, so far 
as we can perceive, putting forth any influences to serve or 
save himself. He stood alone in that garden, in the broad 
light of the full paschal moon, and the band of conspirators 
and ruffians who had come to take him lay prone on the ground. 
He recalls them by asking a second time, " Whom seek ye ? " 
And they made the same reply as before, " Jesus the Nazarene." 
He said to them, " I have told you that I am he ; if, therefore, 
you seek me, let these go away," so that his disciples might not 
suffer with. him. 



i 



THE SIXTH DAT. 635 

They then advanced to seize him, and his disciples, perceiving 

what would follow, said, " Lord, shall we smite with the sword ? " 

The impetuous Peter did not wait for a reply, but 

Peter's zeal 
immediately made a blow at the nearest man, 

who happened to be one Malchus, a servant of the high-priest, 
and cut off his right ear. M. Dupin argues that the fact that 
Peter was not arrested, either at this moment or afterwards, when 
he was recognized by a relative of Malchus at the house of the 
high-priest, is proof that this was an illegal seizure, otherwise 
Peter's resistance would have been " an act of rebellion by an 
armed force against a judicial order." Jesus healed the priest's 
servant with a touch. He also restrained his disciples, who, 
under the awe which the presence of Jesus inspired in his per- 
secutors, might have perhaps delivered him. He said to Peter, 
" Return your sword into its place ; for all who take the sword 
shall perish by the sword. Do you think that I am not able 
to pray unto my Father, and He shall forthwith give me more 
than twelve legions of angels % But how then should the Scrip- 
ture be fulfilled, that thus it must be? The cup which my 
Father has given me, shall I not drink it % " 

He did not, however, forbear to let the multitude understand 
that he knew the illegality of what they were doing. "Have 
you come out as against a thief, with swords and 
clubs, to take me? I sat daily teaching in the 
Temple, and ye laid no hold upon me. But this is the hour, 
and the power of darkness. All this has come to pass that 
the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled." It was a dis- 
tinct intimation to the mob that he was suffering voluntarily, 
and quite as distinct an intimation to his disciples that he waa 
going to suffer certainly. So they understood it, and forsook 
him and fled. 



036 



TELE LAST w rerck. 



Section 4. — The Trial. 

Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews laid 
fiands on Jesus, and bound him and led him away. This was 
another outrage. He was aioue and unarmed, 
tfe oifered no resistance to his captors, but nau 
come forward and surrendered himselt volun- 
tarily, and yet they treated him as a condemn tsu 
malefactor or resisting culprit. 



jmaav morn- 
ing, Apm O, A.JJ. 
Si'. A iresn out- 
rage. 




They took Jesus to the house of Annas. Annas had been 
high-priest. He was first appointed to that office about a.d. 7, 
by Quirinius, Proconsul of Syria, but wap de- 
posed by Valerius Gratus, Procurator of Judaea, 
about seven years later, who gave the office to Ismael, and 



Annas. 






THE SIXTH DAT. 637 

then to Eliezer, the son of Annas, who held it only a year, was 
succeeded by Simon, who held it another year, and then it fel? 
into the hands of Caiaphas, the son-in-law of Annas. Annas had 
not been high-priest for nearly twenty years ; but as father-in-law 
of the actual high-priest, and his sagan or substitute, and having 
held the high office himself, he exerted great influence. Never- 
theless the carrying of Jesus to Annas was a vexatious and irre- 
gular procedure, contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew law, as 
subjecting a m^, before any trial or condemnation, to an insult- 
ing inspection. 

Annas had no right to question Jesus. He was not the proper 
person to deal with the case. He had no jurisdiction. If he had 
had, it was not lawful to put a man in a position 
to condemn himself ; indeed, according to Jewish tioni JL 
law, his own words could not be used against him- 
self. So that any catechising of Jesus in regard to his disciples 
and his doctrines was unlawful. It was a compliment to Annas, 
but an insult to Jesus, as a citizen, to be carried forward to 
gratify the curiosity of this bad old man, who was one of the 
conspirators against the life of the prisoner. There was an 
opportunity now to do Jesus simple justice. H Annas had 
been right-minded he would have taken Jesus into his house, 
and, even if under guard, have kept him until the daylight. His 
great personal influence, his relations with the high-priest (who 
had married his daughter) and with the Sanhedrim, would have 
justified Annas herein. Instead of which he aided and abetted 
those lawless men in their persecution of Jesus. He sent him 
bound, in the night, to the palace of Caiaphas. 

This palace must have been near the chamber in which the 
Sanhedrim held its sessions. The night was wearing away. It 
was growing so cold that while the Sanhedrim 
was being unlawfully assembled, for it could 
not meet at night or on the Sabbath, they made a fire. Until 
the council could be gathered, Caiaphas seems to have taken 
upon himself the catechising of Jesus, which he had no right 
to do personally, but only in his place as President of the San- 
hedrim. He asked him of his doctrines and his disciples, wuth 
evident malice of intent to criminate the prisoner and inculpate 
his friends. 

His dignified reply was, "I spoke openly to the world. I 



638 THE LAST WEEK. 

at all times taught in the synagogue and in the Temple, where 
all the Jews resort, and I have said nothing in secret. Why 
do you question me? Question those who heard me what 1 
said unto them: behold, they know what I said." Here he 
threw himself upon the great reserved Hebrew rights, freedom 
of speech and being confronted by one's accusers. Caiaphas 
must have felt that his proceeding was at least irregular. If he 
had been conducting a trial he should have called for witnesses. 

The reply of Jesus was just what any Hebrew would naturally 
give under the circumstances, provided he had intelligence 

enough to know and courage enough to assert 
Jegug his rights. But one of the ecclesiastical officers 

who stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his 
hand and said, " Do you answer the high-priest so % " The reply 
of Jesus is full of indescribable dignity and forbearance : " If I 
have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil : but if well, why do 
you smite me ? " Here is another speech which shows that Jesus 
knew his rights and was aware that they were invaded. The 
man who struck him might have borne testimony against him, if 
they were both together in a court having jurisdiction; but if he 
did not appear as a witness he had no right to insult him by 
striking him when he was bound. This was an additional out- 
rage which the high-priest permitted to be perpetrated. It 
accumulates the proof that Jesus never had a fair trial as a 
citizen. When another high-priest commanded those who stood 
by Paul, when he was up for a hearing, to smite him on the 
mouth, the intrepid Apostle answered, " God shall smite you, 
you whited wall; for do you sit to judge me after the laws 
and command me to be smitten contrary to law \ " (Acts 
xxiii. 3.) 

All this persecution of Jesus, it is to be noticed, took place in 
the night, contrary to law, which demanded daylight and utmost 
publicity. 

In the mean time Peter began to recover his self-possession. 
He desired to learn what was happening to his Master, and so 

went to the palace of Caiaphas and lingered 

outside. He was joined by "another disciple" 
(John xviii. 15) whose name is not given. It has been assumed 
to be John. There seems little ground for the presumption. 
We can only speculate. The probabilities are that it was Judas. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 639 

Whoever that other disciple was, he was "known to the high- 
priest." There is no reason to believe that John was ; while 
we know that that very week Judas had been with this digni- 
tary making arrangements for the betrayal of Jesus. This will 
also account for the freedom with which he entered the palace of 
the high-priest, and the interest he could make for the admission 
of Peter. John would have been in almost as much danger 
as Peter, as he was generally as prominent in the group about the 
Teacher. On the supposition that this other disciple was Judas 
the whole history becomes easy. Peter might have been ad- 
mitted on the supposition that he was an accomplice with Judas 
in the delivery of Jesus. On any of the theories which have 
been advanced on his character, and motives it was natural that 
Judas in his excitement should follow Jesus into the palace of 
the high-priest to see the result, and would be relieved by the 
presence of another disciple. 

However that may have been, Peter entered. In the court 
of the palace the slaves and officers had made a fire, and stood 
warming themselves. Peter went up to the 
fire and warmed himself with them. It may be 
that the maid who kept the door began to fear that she was 
admitting strangers too freely, or she may have seen the look 
of concern on the face of Peter. She went up to him and said, 
" And are you not one of this man's disciples 1 " He denied it 
before them all, saying, " I am not ; I do not know him, nor do I 
understand what you are saying." 

This peremptory challenge disconcerted Peter, and he walked 
out into the court. Perhaps he put on the air of a man insulted 
before a company. But an excitement had been 
begun by his presence. Another maid-servant, . , 
probably passing him in the court and coming up 
to the fire, stated her belief that the uneasy man out there was a 
disciple of Jesus. While Peter was out in the court-yard the 
cock crew. But it does not seem to have recalled the prediction 
of Jesus. Upon his return to the fire the whisper went round : 
" This fellow was also with Jesus the Nazarene," until one boldly 
blurted out the charge, and still another directly put the question 
to him : " Are you not one of his disciples % " He made a second 
distinct denial, backing it up with some profane expression, and 
asserting that he did " not know the man." 



640 THE LAST WEEK. 

These denials seem to have occurred while the high-priest wae 
examining Jesus. There was an interval of an hour, which was 
spent in assembling the Sanhedrim and in inducing men to be- 
come witnesses. It was cold. Jesus was in the hall inside, which 
opened probably on the court where Peter and the servants and 
officers were. The embarrassing examinations to which Peter 
had been subjected began to be painful. He must have re- 
collected the prominent part he had taken in the affair of Geth- 
semane. He endeavored to throw suspicion from himself by 
engaging in free conversation with the others, as being no more 
personally interested in what was going forward than they were. 
But it did not succeed. His very garrulousness aroused suspi- 
cion. One said, " Of a truth this. man was with him ; for he is a 
Galilsean : his speech betrays him." Jesus was of Galilee. The 
Galilseans were a turbulent race. Most of the disciples of Jesus 
were known to be Galilseans. Their dialect was not that of cul- 
tivated Jews, nor of even the uncultivated inhabitants of the me- 
tropolis. So they made his accentuation a proof against him. 
This called special and unfriendly attention to him. A slave of 
the high-priest and brother of that Malchus whose ear Peter had 
hacked with his sword, regarding him carefully, brought the 
charge home upon him, saying, " Did I not see you in the garden 
with him ? " 

This was too much for Peter. He could not retreat from his 
former denials. He was at the point to be discovered. His im- 
petuous sword-thrust in the garden was about to 

His third denial. , , -, i . TT • , -, . n -, 

be turned upon him. He was m mortal peril and 
in mortal fear. There was nothing to be done but to plunge for- 
ward. He broke into cursing and swearing, and, amid dreadful 
imprecations, denied that he ever had any knowledge of " this 
man " of whom they were speaking. Amid his ungrateful denials 
and horrid blasphemies the cock crew a second time. And Jesus, 
whose smiting Peter had witnessed, turned and looked upon 
him. It was the last look Peter received from the eyes of his 
Master before his death. The look and the crowing of the cock 
came together, and Peter saw how truly had come to pass what 
Jesus had so pathetically predicted, that before the cock should 
crow twice he should deny his Master thrice. Covering his head 
with his mantle he flung himself out of the company and went off 
weeping bitterly. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 



641 



We now return to the examination of Jesus. The night had 
been spent in a fruitless search for witnesses willing to render 
such testimony as the persecutors of Jesus sup- 
posed sufficient to convict him. Only two were 
necessary, but these could not be obtained. The bribes they were 
able to offer, of security and gain, could not move Judas and 
another to testify against him. The day began to break over 
Olivet. The Sanhedrim was assembled. " The priests, the 
elders, and the scribes " were there, three classes of men having 
special enmity against Jesus. They led the prisoner, perhaps in 
solemn procession, from the palace of the high-priest into the 
council-chamber on the Temple mount. 

In the examination which followed there finally came forward 
two witnesses. The testimony of the first was : " He said i I will 
destroy this temple made with hands, and in three 
days I will build another made without hands.' " 
The testimony of the second was : " This man said, ' I am able to 
destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.' " The 
friends and biographers of Jesus asserted that both -statements 
were false, both in form and in intention. The nearest that the 
words of Jesus approached any formula that could have been 
even wrested into either of these statements is when he said, " De- 
stroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," pointing 
probably to his body, at least his friends say that he signified that 
(John ii. 19), and that he spoke in this evasive way as being a 
proper reply to his enemies under the circumstances. But the 
first of these witnesses made the impression that he had threat- 
ened to destroy the Temple, and the second that he merely asserted 
his power to do so. Their testimony did not agree, and " one 
witness is no witness." 

Then the high-priest rose up and said to Jesus, " Do you answer 
nothing to what these witness against you ? " But Jesus held 
his peace. The testimony refuted itself. Then they asked him, 
" If you are the Christ, tell us." He replied, " If I tell you, you 
vvill not believe ; and if I shall question, you will not answer." 

It will be perceived that his persecutors desired to obtain evi- 
dence against him on two counts, — first, blasphemy; secondly, 
sedition : on the first they could condemn him to 
death as lords spiritual, and on the second the Bo- 
man power could execute bim. If they could prove only the 



642 THE LAST WEEK 

former, as it was a mere question of religion, the secular arm 
would not destroy him, and the right to inflict capital punishment 
had been taken away from the Jews. If they proved only the 
latter, they would leave to him all his moral influence over the 
people, in whose eyes any rebellion against Rome was a high vir- 
tue. If both together could be made out, the prisoner would 
perish. They could have found ample proof that Jesus had vio- 
lated the Sabbath, according to their law of observance ; but the 
testimony would have shown that he had always therewith con- 
nected the performance of a miracle. They could have proved 
that he had denounced the clergy and the church, and set the 
traditions and ceremonials of Pharisaism at naught ; but that would 
have excited in his behalf the friendly feeling of the Sadducees, 
who, as well, despised churchism. There was a narrow path to 
tread, and they persistently kept in it. They could not prove the 
necessary allegations, and they attempted illegally to extort con- 
fessions from the prisoner which they might use to his damage. 

Then Caiaphas solemnly said to him, " I adjure you by the liv- 
ing God, that you tell us if you are the Christ [the Messiah] the 

Son of God." He calls upon the prisoner on 
esus pu on oa ^ ^ testify in regard to himself while he is on 

trial on a criminal and capital charge, " a gross 
infraction of that rule of morals and jurisprudence," says Dupin 
" which forbids our placing an accused person between the dan 
ger of perjury and the fear of inculpating himself, and thus mak- 
ing his situation more hazardous." But when the high-priest per- 
sisted, Jesus replied, " You have said it ; moreover I say to you, 
From this time you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." 

Among the ancients the deity was represented, hieroglyphically, 
as being in the clouds, to signify his celestial habitation. Traces 

of the reduction of that picture to language are 

found through the sacred books of the Jews. 
" Jehovah rideth upon a swift cloud," Isa. xix. 1 ; " The clouds 
are the dust of His feet," Nahum i. 3 ; "I saw in the night vi- 
sions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds 
of heaven," Daniel vii. 13. It is very probable that Jesus had 
special reference to this vision of Daniel, as well as general lefer- 
ence to the idea contained in this pictorial representation, which, 
reduced to our language, would mean a claim upon the part of 



THE SIXTH DAY. 64:3 

Jesus to have a divine relation to the world and to be about to be 
acknowledged as a divine person. It is not for a moment to be 
supposed that he intended his words to be taken literally, or that 
the Sanhedrim so took them. Literally they amount to nothing, 
unless one should take them as the harmless exaggeration of a 
weak head. But Jesus was no such man, and the hour was too 
solemn for anything of the kind. He was on trial for his life ; 
he obviously believed that his hour had come ; and he was speak- 
ing from the depths of his nature. He did not mean that he was 
coming on the clouds of heaven literally. It were a ridiculous 
thing ; and thus far we have found nothing ridiculous, surely, in 
the character and words of Jesus r how many soever inexplicable 
things we may have discovered. The high-priest did not so un- 
derstand him, else he would have burst into laughter instead of 
exhibiting horror. Jesus meant to claim divinity. So Caiaphas 
understood him, and so the Sanhedrim. Therein was the blas- 
phemy. If this be not the meaning of Jesus, this part of his his- 
tory seems to me wholly unintelligible. 

When the high-priest heard the reply of Jesus he " rent hi? 
clothes." The sacerdotal robe was worn only in the Temple. Jt 
was his Simla, or upper garment, which Caiaphas 
tore. This expression of pain and grief and hor- v e 3U ge 3 
ror would at first burst forth naturally, afterward 
it came to be enacted theatrically, as we frequently see grief 
" performed," at some of our modern funerals. It became so ex- 
cessive that it was moderated by ecclesiastical law, among the 
regulations of which was one (Levit. xxi. 10) forbidding the high- 
priest to rend his clothes. We learn, however, from 1 Macca- 
bees xi. 71, and from Josephus, B.J., ii. 15, § 2, 4, that this rending 
was allowable to the high-priest in cases of blasphemy. To this 
violent gesture Caiaphas added the exclamation, " See ! he has 
uttered blasphemy ! What further need have we of witnesses ? 
See, now, you have heard the blasphemy ! What is your opin- 
ion?" Here is one who is at once accuser and judge, and he 
presents the disgraceful spectacle of a judge in a rage. He de- 
mands a verdict of condemnation based upon the words of the 
prisoner, as those words are interpreted by himself. All this was 
contrary to well-established Hebrew law. 

The whole council caught the temper of this violent man. The 
judges excitedly asked him again, "Are you then the Son of 



644 THE LAST WEEK. 

God ? " — " I am," said Jesus. They cried out, " He deserves tc 
die." The officers, the slaves, the bystanders generally broke 

into furious revilings, taunts, and insults. While 
. still on his trial, before condemnation, the high 

priest and the council gave him over to the bru- 
talities of the unofficial people. They spat in his face, slave? 
slapped him with the palms of their hands, they blindfolded him, 
and said, " Prophesy to us, O Messiah, who is he that struck you." 
And the judge and the jury allowed all this. Indeed these men 
probably did it that they might obtain the favor of their masters. 
And yet it is maintained by such learned and liberal modern 
Jews as M. Salvador that as a Hebrew citizen Jesus was fairly 
tried. 

While suffering these things Jesus heard Peter cursing and 
swearing, and avowing that he never knew him. From his inf uri 
ated judges he turned and looked upon his faithless disciple. 
Jesus was most completely abandoned. 

Section 5. — Pilate. 

It is to be remembered that Palestine was a conquered pro- 
vince, regularly governed by the conquerors. Six years after the 

birth of Jesus, Archelaus, son of Herod, had 

The Procurator. , 1 -i-itt j a • i 

been deposed, and Judsea and Samaria annexed 

to the province of Syria, the Prceses or governor of which was 
the highest representative of Poman imperialism. Nevertheless 
a special procurator was appointed for Judsea, and the office at 
this time was held by Pontius Pilate. The procurator ordinarily 
resided at Csesarea, by the seaside, but usually came up with 
troops to attend the great festivals, partly for the enjoyment he 
might have amid the excitements, and partly because it was his 
duty to keep the Poman authority before the eyes of the Jews, 
and to be ready to repress any popular outbreak which would be 
likely to occur when so many people were assembled at the me- 
tropolis. During the six years in which he had held the office 
Pilate had incensed the Jews by his violence and oppression. 

The Sanhedrim had no right to inflict capital punishment. 

Wherever Pome extended its dominion the jus gladii, the right 

of the sword, the power over life and death, was 

The jvsgladii. taken f rom the conquered. In the case of the 

Jews all minor matters were left in the hands of their council, 



THE SIXTH DAY. 646 

especially the settlement of all religious questions, but civil cases 
were tried by the procurator, and capital cases by the Prseses. Ir. 
this case it seems to have been deputed to the procurator. He 
was present in the city. It was the beginning of Friday. The 
Passover was to commence on the evening of that day. They 
had only that morning to secure the condemnation and execution 
of Jesus. If delayed until the festival had passed, the whole coun- 
try might be aroused and a great reaction in his favor might set in. 
It was, therefore, determined to keep him bound and guarded, and 
to assemble at daybreak and push their plans to a consummation. 

All the night long was Jesus buffeted, tortured, insulted. They 
would have killed him if they had dared ; but Pome looked down 
on them from the tower of Antonia and kept even churchly rage 
in check. 

Day began to dawn. The light was breaking over Olivet. The 
earliest movements must be made. The procurator must be seen 
as early as practicable. There was a reassembling 
of the Sanhedrim. In the night session they had 
condemned him : but beyond that they were powerless ; they 
could not execute him, and they could not see Pilate at that hour. 
The object of the morning meeting was to concoct plans to have 
him put to death, according to their verdict. This could be done 
only through Pilate. They pre-arranged their methods. They 
took Jesus bound, making as imposing a procession as possible ; 
thus, as far as in them lay, prejudicing his case. The palace 
of Pilate had been desecrated in their eyes by having been the 
residence of a Gentile. These scrupulous officials, intent on a 
ciime, compassing the destruction of a man against whom they 
could prove nothing, although he had led a public life by the 
space of three years, were so cautious that they would not defile 
themselves by entering a Gentile's house, because the Passover 
was at hand. They forgot that the members of the Sanhedrim 
were bound to spend the day fasting in which they had con- 
demned a man to death. Churehism is the same in all ages. 

They sent in to Pilate, and he came out, as his custom was. 
Then commenced a play of passions on both sides, which consti- 
tutes a profoundly interesting study. He saw 
the crowd, the council, the prisoner. It was an 
unusual hour. It must be an unusual case. His quick eye 
interpreted the general meaning of the scene. Turning to Caia- 



646 THE LAST WEEK. 

phas and the Sanhedrim, he said, "What accusation do yon 
bring against this man ? " 

It is not poetry, it is criticism, to strive to know what looks and 
gestures accompanied any speech of any historical character. It 
is well known how greatly these vary the sense of the mere 
words. If we could know precisely the motions of the person, 
the play of the lips, the glance of the eye of Jesus, how much 
more intelligible would his words be, and how our interpretation 
of them might be changed. And still more how we should be 
helped by a knowledge of the precise tone and emphasis he em- 
ployed. The same is true of others, and here of Pilate. He may 
have looked at Jesus and seen him pale and worn, yet calm as the 
morning in whose light he stood. He may have contrasted the 
face of the prisoner, so free from passion, with the heated and 
fierce glare in the countenances of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrim, 
whose excitement and anger through the night must have left 
their traces ; and Pilate may have uttered unfeigned surprise by 
the exclamatory question, " What accusation do you bring against 
him f " as if intimating that if either party should be plaintiff it 
was Jesus. 

But, read with any emphasis, the question gave the churchmen 
plainly to understand that in this case Pilate did not intend to 
pronounce a confirmation of any sentence they 
may have passed, ordering its execution without 
examination and perfunctorily. Unfortunately for him he had in 
haste done such things before, and thus emboldened these men to 
venture in this case a presumption upon his judicial carelessness. 
He gave them to understand that he intended to take cognizance 
of this case. His question assumed, what the Sanhedrim knew 
to be true, that he had the right of original jurisdiction, as repre 
sentative of the Poman Emperor. This took them aback. They 
had not expected from Pilate such assertion of his rights. They 
expected of him simply the secular sanction to their ecclesiastical 
verdict. They expected to be acknowledged as judges. But Pi- 
late took the bench, and put them on the stand of the witnesses. 
This touched their pride to the quick, while it seemed to inti- 
mate a miscarriage of their whole plan. Their 
., arrogant reply was, " If he were not a malefactor 

we would not have delivered him up to you.'* 
As if they resented the insult which was implied in his words, 



THE SIXTH DAT. 647 

that they could have condemned an innocent man. But Pilate 
was as proud as Caiaphas. In reply to their claim to be judges, 
he said, " Take him, and judge him according to your law." As 
if he had ironically said, " Oh, that is it ! You do not vouchsafe 
to inform me even of the accusation against this man. You claim 
to be judges. You know your limit. I am sure that I am will- 
ing that you should try him according to your law, and condemn 
him, and punish him as far as the law will permit. If you be 
judges, take the case away, and do not trouble me with it." This 
irony was stinging ; but the Roman might become obstinate, and 
insist that the case remain with them, and they could not put 
Jesus to death ; and so the whole scheme was like to miscarry. 

This brought them to terms. They were obliged to submit the 
indictment. If they had had all power in their hands tbey would 
have stoned him for blasphemy. It is noticeable 
that Jesus had predicted that his career would „. ound 
end in crucifixion, the Roman — rather than in 
stoning, the Hebrew — mode of execution. The probabilities had 
all been in favor of the latter. It was this sudden and unex- 
pected obstinacy of Pilate which changed the current of affairs. 
For a moment they were in perplexity. To tell Pilate that Jesus 
had committed blasphemy, by claiming to be the Son of (xod, 
would go for nothing. He had no interest in. their religious 
questions : he was utterly a pagan. They changed their ground, 
and said, " We found this one perverting our nation, and forbid- 
ding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ, a 
King." There are three counts in this allegation ; the first two 
being to the nation notoriously false, and the third being to Pilate 
merely ridiculous. Jesus had explicitly taught the people to 
" render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's ; " but the bare 
fact that such a question should have been brought to him is an in- 
dication of the unsettled state of the public mind, and how ready 
the people were to listen to any suggestions of rebellion. Caia- 
phas and his fellow-conspirators knew that, in the sense in which 
Pilate must have understood it, the third count was false. Jesus 
had aspired to no temporal rule, and had done nothing to make 
himself a rival of Caesar, but had simply claimed to be the Mes- 
siah, a claim in which the representative of the Roman Emperor 
could have no official, and scarcely any personal, interest. 

When Pilate, from the portico of his palace, looked .down /apoB 



648 THE LAST WEEK. 

the meek face of the prophet from Galilee and saw his hands 
bound, and the spittle of the slaves on his beard, 
chara-e an( ^ *^ s general friendlessness, and how thor- 

oughly he was in the hands of his enemies, it 
must have seemed the most absurd thing to him that Caiaphas 
should bring such a man, under such circumstances, and charge 
him with the loftiest political ambition and the most immense 
political enterprise. And then a suspicion must have come to him 
that there was something behind all this ; that if Jesus really had 
entertained ideas of revolt, these priests were the very first men 
to foster any opposition and trouble to Home, and the very last 
men to oppose or even embarrass the movements of any real 
rebel. 

But as the allegation had been made, the investigation must be 
had. Pilate went into the preetorium, so as to take his official 
position. The Roman trial was public. Any could enter. Jesus 
had no scruples, and when he was called went in at once. There 
were the representatives of the scrupulous churchmen present. If 
they could not go in, they could send in those who should watch 
and in some measure influence proceedings. Friends of Jesus 
might also enter and report to those outside. 

Pilate said to Jesus, " Are you the King of the Jews ? " Whether 
Pilate intended it or not, there was a trap in the question. It 
could not have a categorical answer. If Jesus 
said "Yes," to Pilate's manner of thought it 
might seem an acknowledgment of the charge of 
sedition they were making against him. If he said "No," it 
would seem an abandonment of the Messianic claims he had al- 
ready advanced. His reply to Pilate was a question, " Do you 
say this of yourself, or did others tell it you of me?" To a man 
of the world like Pilate it should have showed that the person be- 
fore him was not a crazy adventurer from the rural districts, 
whose claim to be Tiberius himself, if he had made it, would have 
been as harmless as any other utterance of wild insanity. It 
meant, " Do you put that question to me in the Poman or the 
Jewish, in the political or the ecclesiastical sense % " — " Am I a 
Jew \ " Pilate replied rather petulantly. u Your own nation and 
the high-priest have delivered you to me ! What have you done ? " 
Jesus had done nothing. His abstinence from all politics was 
remarkable. His enemies could bring nothing against him. The 



In the prseto- 



riura. 



THE SIXTH DAT. 649 

charge of sedition was an unfounded calumny, and they had not 
been able to find a solitary man in the crowded city to bear wit- 
ness thereto. 

But now he can approach an answer to Pilate which shall be 
consistent at once with his innocence and his claims. He said : 

" My kingdom is not of this world. If my king- < 

, P , , . -it,! -II , Jesus replies to 

dom were or this world, then would my servants pa ate 

fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. 
My kingdom is not from hence." Here was a statement which 
implied that there was a kingdom whose defenders were not the 
Roman eagles. To an imperial official there seemed no kingdom 
that was not Roman. Or, if any other kingdom, it would draw 
sword but in vain, for it should soon succumb to Roman power. 
But the kingdom of Jesus was totally disengaged from secular 
governments, reigning under and over and through them, and 
would survive them, and did not need the defence of the sword. 
But a kingdom implied a king, and yet such a kingdom as Jesus 
had beeu describing seemed a mere vague idea ; so Pilate asked, 
" Are you not a king then ? " 

Now Jesus had placed his judge in such a posture that the an- 
swer about to be given should not be deceptive : " Thou sayest 
that I am a king. To this end was I born, and 
for this purpose came I into the world, that I S C ° n rep y * 
should bear witness concerning the truth. Every one who is of 
the truth hears my voice." It was the kingdom of truth, and not 
of physical power, in which he claimed to be supreme. Such a 
claim threatened no danger to the Emperor : why, then, should 
Pilate care for it? He had heard such things before. There 
were Greek and Roman philosophers who taught that those who 
lived by the truth were kings among men. And it seemed to 
Pilate that it was the same proposition he had heard often, now 
pronounced by a Jew. He did not believe that men could reach 
the ultimate and absolute truth. It was a pretty fancy for poetic 
dreamers, a fine theory for recluses and philosophers, but there 
was nothing practical in it, nor useful to a man of affairs. It may 
have been with some bitterness of regret that such a search should 
be, as he believed, fruitless, that Pilate exclaimed with a sigh, 
" "What is truth ? " as he passed out to the portico to announce the 
acquittal of Jesus to the priests, which he did by saying, "I find 
no fault in him." 



650 THE LAST WEEK. 

Then the vehement Sanhedrim repeated their accusations. Jesus 
said not a word. The contrast between the raging churchmen 
and the meek heretic struck Pilate so forcibly 
that he appealed to him: "Do you answer 
nothing % See how many things they witness against you." Jesus 
kept his silence. In the ecclesiastical and in the civil courts 
Jesus paid no attention to anything that did not touch his claims 
to Messiahship. When that was involved he was perfectly ex- 
plicit, giving his persecutors and his judges ample ground. On 
all else he was silent. He seemed determined, when put to death, 
to perish in his claim to be the Son of God in a sense signifying 
that he was God's equal. This self-control seemed marvellous to 
Pilate, who reiterated his judgment, saying, " I find no fault in 
this man." But the crowd about the portico was fierce. How- 
ever innocent Jesus might be, he had manifestly rendered himseli 
odious to the ecclesiastical rulers. It placed Pilate in a trying 
position. For all that appeared, he should have set Jesus free : 
but to do so peremptorily, before he had allayed the passionate 
excitement of the church party, would be to peril all parties. His 
parley with the priests was in the interests of Jesus and justice. 

But the rabid mob shouted, " He stirs up the multitude through- 
out all Judaea, even beginning from Galilee to this place." Here 
was a distinct charge of sedition : but the naming of Galilee was 
an outlet for the perplexed Pilate. They mentioned it as a 
sinister circumstance that this man's ministry had begun among 
the turbulent Galilseans, in a country belonging to his political 
adversary. The shrewd Pilate saw in it a solution of his diffi- 
culty. 



Section 6. — Herod. 

The part which Herod Antipas had taken in the murder of 

John the Baptist has been narrated. This king, Koman in office, 

Hebrew in faith, licentious in life, had been 
Herod and Jesus. i , -i ■. ,.,. • ,1 

haunted by superstitious terror ever since the 

assassination of John in prison. When he heard that another 

prophet was travelling through the country, preaching with a skill 

the effects of which surpassed those of the vehement eloquence of 

John, and to such preaching adding the wonder of miracles, until 

the whole land was full of his fame, and when it was whispered 



THE SIXTH DAT. 651 

that this new preacher was Elias, or one of the old prophets, or 
perhaps John the Baptist, the guilty soul of Herod adopted the 
last of these suppositions and said, " It is John." At first he en 
deavored to induce Jesus to leave the country by conveying to him 
the warning that if he remained in the territory of Herod that 
prince would kill him. But as time wore away, and his conscience 
hardened, and his feelings of terror were allayed, he conceived a 
curiosity to see the great things which Jesus did. 

There had come a cloud between Herod and Pilate. Some of 
the turbulent subjects of the former had visited Jerusalem on a fes- 
tival occasion, and created an insurrection which 
Pilate had suppressed by indiscriminate slaughter, late 
not stopping to send them for trial to the courts in 
the dominion of Herod. This had made an estrangement between 
the rulers. Now the Galilsean king had come up to Jerusalem to 
celebrate the Passover. It would be a graceful recognition of 
Herod's jurisdiction, and a compliment, to send this distinguished 
prisoner to him for trial, and it would free Pilate from further 
proceedings. Therefore he sent him to Herod. It did heal the 
quarrel ; but it did not relieve Pilate of the case. 

When the frivolous Herod saw Jesus he was glad. There was 
not manliness enough in him to see that this was a most perplex- 
ing affair, in which the empire, his own tetrarchy, 
the weal of the Jewish people, and the interests Herod 
of his ancestral religion, as well as the fate of a 
great and good man might be involved. It was an opportunity to 
have an exhibition of legerdemain or necromancy, and this in- 
cestuous assassin had no such weight on his seared conscience that 
he could not enjoy any species of entertainment. He catechised 
Jesus in many ways, endeavoring to draw him at least into con- 
versation. Jesus looked at him with that broad look which inno- 
cent manliness gives to crime. He could have spoken what 
would have riven Herod, but he was silent. The church party 
stood near, and were vehement and violent in their accusations ; 
but not a word could be extorted from Jesus. He had never be- 
fore met any man or woman or child to whom he would not 
speak. There never was so great a sinner that, with any expres- 
sion of contrition, could, not have a word from Jesus. But Herod 
lived and died, probably the only man who, having seen Jesus, 
never heard the tones of his voice nor a syllable from his lips. 



652 



THE LAST WEEK. 



There was no point of contact between Jesus and Herod. II 
he had addressed Jesus with any proper desire to know any 

P ro P er thing, Herod would doubtless have had a 
Jesus speechless. , ~ ° , m i -r».i 

word irom the great 1 eacher. Pilate was a time- 
serving coward, and Caiaphas a hypocritical bigot, but Jesus 
talked with them. Herod's frivolous licentiousness had eaten his 
whole manhood out. Fretted by the profound, the majestic, the 
awful silence of Jesus, Herod and his military guard set him at 
naught, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and 
sent him back to Pilate. If we were writing a poem instead of a 
history, we might indulge in descriptions of the probable reflec- 
tions of Herod after the speechless prophet of Galilee had gone 
out of his presence. Although Herod was so mean that he could 
allow an uncondemned man, who had been tortured all night, to 
remain bound and be insulted in his presence, even that bad 
prince did not have the heart to say that there was in him any- 
thing worthy of death. 



Section 7. — Bach to Pilate. 

Back to Pilate is Jesus now sent. We do not know whether 
Pilate was in the tower of Antonia, and Herod occupying the 
palace of his father, which is said to have exceeded the Temple in 
splendor, but in any case the distance was not great. The troubled 
procurator discovered that he had appeased Herod, but had not 
shifted the responsibility of this most perplexing case. When he 
saw Jesus brought back, wearing a robe of mockery, it plainly 
confirmed his suspicion that the accused was innocent. The 
greater part of his public life had been passed in the territory of 
Herod, who must have known the fact if Jesus had been a sedi- 
tious person. His treatment of the prisoner plainly said that 
Herod regarded his kingly pretension as a harmless vagary, not fit 
to be treated seriously by any ruler. 

Then Pilate called the Sanhedrim to him and addressed them 

thus : " You have brought this man to me as one who perverts the 

people, a revolutionary demagogue. And see, I 

Pilate and the k ave examined him in your presence, and have 
Sanhedrim. . 

found no fault in this man touching those things 

whereof you accuse him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him to us ; 

and see, nothing deserving of death has been done by him. I will 



THE SIXTH DAY. 653 

sec turge and release him." It is quite evident that Pilate had no 
feelings of malignity against Jesus. He was really desirous of 
releasing him, while desirous at the same time of pleasing the 
Sanhedrim as far as practicable. He appeals to the fact that he 
had taken cognizance of the case ; had heard the indictment ; had 
openly conducted the trial in their presence, so that they could put 
in any proofs they thought likely to convict, and he had been 
willing to convict, and had shown his willingness by sending the 
prisoner to Herod, a native prince and a co-religionist of theirs, as 
the ruler in whose jurisdiction the most of the life of Jesus had 
been spent, and where, as they had alleged, Jesus had stirred up the 
people. ISTo proof of seditious behavior had appeared. This man 
might be a wild enthusiast, but he was not a dangerous revolution- 
ist. He should therefore scourge him and release him. 

This was a great error, and most un-Roman. The man was 
innocent or guilty. If innocent, his release was imperative ; if 
guilty, the judge should not have been endeavor- 
ing to protect him. But Pilate had his political 
difficulties, and office was sweet to him. Moreover, he may have 
hoped to satisfy the rancor of the churchmen by the scourging of 
this young heretic, and thus spare the young man's life. 

In the mean time the ecclesiastical party were busy with the 
multitude, inciting them to violent demonstration. They had been 
telling the people that Jesus had blasphemed before the Sanhe- 
drim, the high council of the nation, claiming to be Jehovah. It is 
always to be remembered that the people expected the Messiah to 
be a man, and not a God, not even an angel, certainly not Jehovah. 
Blasphemy was the supreme crime in their code of ethics. It was 
because Jesus was a good man, such a very good man, and exer- 
cised such great moral power, that they regarded him as about to 
be their Messiah. If, however, he had blasphemed in the presence 
of the elders of his people, he could be nothing to them but a de- 
ceiver. The passions of the mob were adroitly plied by these 
wily and bitter ecclesiastics, and they were prepared to show an 
outbreak of passionate reactionary feeling against Jesus. 

Pilate does not seem to have calculated on this state of affairs 

when he resolved to appeal from the clergy to the 

laitv, from the priests to the people. He must have T . he . P eo P le 

J} P „ against Jesus, 

known something of the personal popularity of 

the young prophet, and hoped to be able to array the people 



654 THM LAST WEEK. 

against their rulers. For that purpose, apparently, he gathered 
them together, and when they were assembled they reminded him 
of the custom which had added to the festivity of the Passover by 
the release of some prisoner. How long this had been a custom 
we know not, nor can we now determine whether it was of purely 
Jewish or purely Roman origin. The Romans were accustomed 
to propitiate conquered peoples by acts of political grace. A 
parallel between a malefactor and the goat slain on atonement- 
day may have inclined the Israelites to execute great criminals 
on festivals, and their disposition to release a prisoner at the feast 
might be referred to the goat which was let go free into the desert. 
At any rate the custom existed, and when Pilate came before 
the mob they broke into a demand that he should comply with the 
custom, which gave them any prisoner they might 
demand, no matter what his crime. It seems to 
have flashed upon Pilate as a bright idea. He could now turn this 
demand to the account of Jesus. He agreed that it was the custom, 
and that he was prepared to observe it, and then, that they might 
come to his aid against the priests, he fell upon another expedient. 
There lay in the prison at that moment a man named Barabbas, 
whose general notoriety as a robber had culminated in an act of 
sedition in the very metropolis, in which outbreak it was well 
known that he had committed murder. As the ringleader of the 
insurrectionists, who also lay bound with him, it was generally 
supposed that on this day he would be crucified. He had 
been tried and convicted for the very crime which had been 
charged on Jesus, namely, sedition. No one doubted the guilt of 
Barabbas, while no one could bring a particle of proof to fasten 
the charge on Jesus. The contrast was striking. Agreeing to 
observe the custom, he narrows the choice to a selection between 
Jesus and Barabbas, not having apparently the shadow of a doubt 
that the popular voice would at once release Jesus from his peril 
and Pilate from his perplexity. 

To his utter astonishment the people preferred Barabbas. 
His trouble was increased at this moment by another circum- 
stance. It had formerly been forbidden the governors of con- 
quered provinces to carry their wives with them to 

the provincial capitals. This rule had been modi- 
aream. x -*• 

fled so as to allow the ladies to accompany their 
lords, the governors being held responsible for any intrigues or 



THE SIXTH DAT. 655 

derelictions of their spouses. Pilate's wife, — whose name as Clau- 
dia Procla, and whose fame as a woman of devout habits, leaning 
kindly to the religion of the people whom her husband ruled, tra- 
dition has preserved, — moved by a morning dream, sent a messenger 
to her husband beseeching him to have nothing to do against Jesus, 
who, she was persuaded, was a good man. The message came to 
Pilate while he was on the judgment-seat, and while he was 
endeavoring to solve the problem of saving Jesus and placating 
the church party, bent on his ruin. Worldly man as he was, there 
was doubtless a tinge of superstition in his heart. He may have 
had no clear theological opinions, no fixed religious convictions, 
but all the peoples among whom he had travelled believed in gods, 
and there was something in this prisoner which strangely influ- 
enced him ; perhaps lie was a god, and perhaps the gods gave warn 
ing in dreams. It may have occurred to his recollection what had 
been rife in Rome, that the night before the great Caesar was assas- 
sinated, his wife Calphurnia dreamed that her husband's bloody 
body fell across her knees. Thus his perplexity was increased. 

He could scarcely persuade himself that the people had made 
this choice. He was not much of a democrat. He could not have 
believed that most monstrous falsehood, Voxpqpu- 

h vox Dei est. But a few days before, the multi- T1 f stable 

. , , • • -r i -i people, 

tude had come trooping into Jerusalem, shout- 
ing paeans to this extraordinarily popular prophet. They certainly 
could not now prefer Barabbas to him, for Barabbas had made 
the highway dangerous and had been a common villain. More- 
over, he had been condemned for that of which their leaders had 
accused Jesus. It is this which had made Pilate all along sus- 
picious of the churchmen : they preferred a political charge against 
Jesus, while he knew that in their hearts they did not love the 
Roman yoke. But Pilate was giving way. He had already 
agreed to scourge an innocent man. They pushed him. They 
cried out " all at once." It was the roar of what Burke calls the 
Bellua Populus, that wild beast the People. It was becoming 
frightful. " Not this man ! " " Away with this fellow ! " " Release 
Barabbas to us ! " What is the governor to do in this case ? Jesus 
is charged with sedition, and the Jews are proving their loyalty 
to Rome by urging his destruction ; but they are proving their 
disloyalty by demanding the release of a man convicted of leading 
a seditious insurrection. 



656 THE LAST WEEK. 

Standing on his judgment-seat, before the tessellated pavement, 
Pilate demanded : " What shall I do, then, with Jesus, who is 
called Christ, whom ye call King of the Jews ? " 
it " Crucify him, crucify him," they exclaimed. A 

third time the governor interposed : " What evil 
has he done ? Prove a capital crime. I have found no cause of 
death in him. I will release him, after having scourged him." 
But that proposition did not pacify them. They cried out the 
more exceedingly, saying, with loud voices, "Let him be cru- 
cified ! " When the populace united with the priests Pilate gave 
way. He had shown a weakness of which the priests, who hated 
him, took advantage. Perhaps he reasoned thus : Things have 
reached such a pass that quiet can no more be restored without 
bloodshed. To release Jesus will not save him from this furious 
mob, who will tear him in pieces. An insurrection will be raised. 
I shall be compelled to call out the troops. Then several will 
perish. I shall have to give him up ! 

The weak ruler sent for a ewer of water, and standing in hia 
place he washed his hands before them all, and again declared 
the innocence of Jesus, but by this symbolic act 
his hards endeavored to throw all responsibility from him- 

self, saying to the mob, " I am innocent of the 
blood of this just person ! But see you to it ! " The infuriated 
multitude answered : " His blood be on us and on our children ! " 
Then, deceiving himself and drugging his conscience, Pilate con- 
sented to their demand, and released Barabbas to them. 

Then Pilate caused Jesus to be scourged. The Koman scourg- 
ing surpassed the Hebrew in all the particulars of severity. In 
the latter only the shoulders were bared ; in the 
esus scourge . £ ormer fa G whole person : in the latter the stripes 
were limited to forty, save one ; in the former there was no limit. 
It was the punishment given to a slave. The stripes of the lash 
were loaded with bones or metallic fragments. The scourging 
of those who were to be crucified was so frightful that the con- 
demned frequently escaped the cross by dying under the thongs. 
Then the soldiers of Pilate took Jesus away into the common 
hall, called the Prsetorium, probably in the castle of Antonia, 
and gathered the whole company of the guard, 
Jesus mocked. ^.^ usually numbered aboilt 400 men. They 

stripped him again, and on his torn and bleeding shoulders put a 



Pilate in trouble. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 657 

scarlet robe, probably some old military coat from the wardrobe 
of the guard-room. Then they plaited a crown from the twigs 
of some thorny growth. It may have been the Syrian acacia, the 
thorns of which are as long as an ordinary finger. But we can- 
not know what particular kind of thorns were used. It is enough 
that they intended to mock him, and that they were not wanting 
in cruelty. The more painful as well as humiliating the instru- 
ment of their mockery, the more acceptable it would be. Then 
they put a reed in his hand as a mock sceptre. Then they knelt 
before him and ridiculed him and his nation, saying : " Hail ! 
King of the Jews." And they spat on him. He was bound. 
The reed was laid in his hands, but he did not hold it. He was 
perfectly passive. It fell. Some of the guard seized it, and with 
it drove the thorn-crown down upon his head. They smote and 
mocked him, varying their indignities. 

Pilate looked on this wild scene. We can conjecture hxs 
thoughts from his actions. He must have regarded this whole 
affair with mingled feelings of perplexity, awe, 
and apprehension. He had never seen such a 
sufferer. Most majestic amid ridicule, most serene amid tor 
tures, here was a man fit to be king anywhere. Yet he had not 
sought to use his marvellous personal influence for personal ad- 
vancement. There was Barabbas, coarse and brutal, being the 
vilest kind of person and doing the very things which the priests 
had charged upon Jesus. If being seditious was such a heinous 
crime in their eyes, why should they not desire the destruction of 
Barabbas, who had been convicted of repeated acts under cir- 
cumstances of great aggravation, and why should they desire the 
destruction of. Jesus, who was charged with sedition, but against 
whom there was proved no single seditious word or act ? It was 
a great puzzle. Some other basis than loyalty to Rome lay under 
this extraordinary zeal of the priests. Pilate determined to make 
one more effort to save the life of this wonderful sufferer. 

Taking Jesus, thorn-crowned, covered about with the old robe 
that burlesqued royalty, faint, worn, haggard, as he must have 
been after the night and morning of agony and 
torture, he placed the prisoner once more before cce oma 
the people, reasserting his conviction of the innocence of Jesus. 
He pointed to this weak and apparently helpless man. He 
allowed how lonely and friendless and powerless he seemed. 
42 



658 THE LAST WEEK. 

Jerusalem should be too magnanimous, and Rome too lofty, to 
crush out this poor peasant-prophet for fear he should become 
too strong for Church and State. He said to them : " Ecce 
Homo ! Behold the man." As if he had said : " Can that be a 
dangerous person ? " It was a pathetic appeal. Even Pilate's 
voice may have been unsteady in making this utterance. But 
the church hate was not to be touched. Jesus was to be de- 
stroyed. " Crucify him ! Crucify him ! Give him the extreme 
punishment of a slave," they cried. Pilate said : " Take you 
him and crucify him ; for I find no fault in him." 

The crafty priests, determined, if possible, to make Pilate a 
tool in their hands by inducing him to acknowledge their verdict, 
making him thus not a judge in a court of ori- 
, ginal jurisdiction, but a mere recorder of their 

authoritative decisions, said to Pilate : " We have 
a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made 
himself the Son of God." What definite idea this last phrase 
conveyed to the mind of pagan Pilate we cannot tell, but the 
whole statement made his soul afraid. He was growing weaker 
and more superstitious. He went back into the judgment-hall 
and sent for Jesus and said to him : " Whence are you ? " The 
wonderful prisoner, who had uttered no complaint, and showed 
no nervousness, and seemed to take less interest in the whole 
tragedy than any spectator, held his peace. " What ! " said Pi- 
late, " do you not speak to me f Do you not know that I have 
power to crucify you, and power to release you?" Jesus an- 
swered : a You could have no power against me, unless it were 
given you from above ; on this account he who has delivered me 
to you has the greater sin." In the judgment of Jesus, Caiaphas 
is worse than Pilate. 

All this increased in Pilate a desire to release Jesus. The pris- 
oner was guilty of no crime, was apparently capable of no dis- 
turbance, had no marks of wickedness in his 
ee ease j^^ry or hi s manners, had been very popular 

with the masses in the rural districts, had dis- 
played the most extraordinary composure during a period of 
extraordinary peril, had the reputation of a miracle- worker, had 
excited the dreams of Claudia Procla, had called himself the Son 
of God, and was manifestly the object of intense hatred on the 
part of the priesthood. Again Pilate sought to release Jesus 



THE SIXTH DAY. 659 

Uut the churchmen had kejifc their strongest form of argument for 
their last. They return to the political aspect of the affair, and 
put it before Pilate thus : " If you release this man you are not Cae- 
sar's friend : whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar." 
The phrase " Caesar's friend," Amicus Ccesaris, had not only 
the ordinary signification of the words, but was a title of honor 

which the Emperors were accustomed to bestow 

,t . ... v t . , j Csesar's friend, 

upon their representatives ruling over subjugated 

peoples. It was a most ingenious way of putting the case. It 
struck Pilate on his weakest side. He was a lover of place, an 
office-seeker, who considered the loss of his political position the 
greatest misfortune, as is shown in the fact that when that did 
befall him he retired to Graul and committed suicide. The priests 
knew their man, and Pilate knew how insecurely already he held 
his seat, and that such an accusation, if pressed with show of evi- 
dence, would be his ruin at Pome. Tiberius was suspicious. 
Pilate had been closeted with Jesus. The trial had been infor- 
mal. They now had much to show. If he had only taken the 
strong and dignified position which became an Imperial Procura- 
tor, and released Jesus as soon as he was convinced that he was 
innocent, and began to feel perhaps that he was divine, Pilate 
wo*uld have saved himself ; but he had vacillated so long and 
grown so weak that this last push toppled him from all his intel- 
lectual and moral proprieties. He fell. 

Jesus was brought forth and placed in the judgment-seat, in 
what was called the Pavement, from the tessellated pavement in 
front of the judge, and in Hebrew Gabbatha, the 

etymology of which is not quite clear. The for- ^ tna re " 

4/0,7 - 1 stuned. 

mal ceremonials of a trial were now resumed. 

Pilate was going to condemn Jesus ; but, enraged at the defeat of 
his efforts to release him, he called the attention of the Jewish 
leaders to the pale and poor prisoner at the bar, and said in de- 
rision, " Behold your king ! " But they called out, " Away, 
away, crucify him ! " Still taunting them, knowing that by pro- 
nouncing the sentence he should be secure at Pome, and venting 
his rage on them he said, " Shall I crucify your king % " They 
answered, " We have no king but Caesar ! " 

It was the shriek of a dying nationality. Their earliest ances- 
tors had lived under a theocracy whose king had held court in a 
pillar of flame and on the top of rocking Sinai. They had had 



660 THE LAST WEEK. 

no king but Jehovah. Their descendants had had such kings as 
the great David and the super-splendid Solomon. This very gen- 
eration of men, who were howling around a pagan 

,.^ jms na " court-house to secure the condemnation of Jesus, 
tionakty. ' 

had had hopes of a theocratic Messiah. But 
their thirst for innocent blood was uncontrollable. They throw 
up all hopes of the future as they did all traditions of the past. 
They lifted the casket that contained the treasure of their nation- 
ality and flung it into the maelstrom of the Roman dominion. 
" We have no king but Caesar." The nationality of Abraham and 
David and Solomon and the Maccabees was surrendered in spirit, 
as it had been captured in form, to an imperialism whose repre- 
sentative was the dark, suspicious, cruel, and debased Tiberius. 
" We have no king but Caesar ! " Judaism's " loyalty " was Ju- 
daism's doom. So perishes every church and people and man 
that will " have no king but Caesar." 

Then Pilate sealed their fate and his own by delivering Jesus 

to be crucified. What the precise form of sen- 
The sentence. , • , i • , i mi 

tence was in this case we cannot now know. Ine 

usual formula was, " Ibis ad crucem," " Go to the cross." 

Section 8. — The Last of Judas. 

I think it is most probable that this is the point at which Judas 

reappears. The condemnation by the Sanhedrim would not have 

aroused him, on any theory of his motives. If 
His hopes and i , -, T , -.. -, i 

. he expected Jesus to display superhuman power 

and deliver himself it was not reasonable to sup- 
pose that this would occur until he was placed in extremis, aftei 
his condemnation by the Roman authorities. The verdict of the 
ecclesiastical council could have little terror for any disciple of 
Jesus, and every Jew knew that it could not issue in capital pun- 
ishment without the sanction of the procurator. But Judas, who 
seems to have been with Peter in the palace of the high-priest, 
most probably watched every movement of all the parties, and as 
Pilate or the priest had seemed to have the better of the argument 
the hopes or fears of Judas had risen or fallen. 

But now, when he plainly saw that Jesus had received the con- 
demnation of the church, and the sentence had been ratified by 
the State, and that " the Master " did not pass out of their midst, 
but had submitted to scourging and mockery and insult, and waa 



THE SIXTH DAY. 661 

apparently not going to put forth any effort for his own rescue 
Judas felt the whole ground give way under him. The one huge 
dark fact fell on his whole superstructure of rea- 
sonings and it fell. He was smitten with re- . e £ roun 
morse. He had expected no such issue of his 
conduct. As by a flash of lightning in a tempestuous midnight a 
precipice is discovered by the traveller to be at his very feet, so 
Judas now suddenly saw the abysses of horrible meanings which 
were in the words that Jesus had spoken at the Supper concern- 
ing his betrayer. The whole of the beautiful, beneficent life of 
Jesus rose up before him. He reviewed all the personal kindness 
and forbearance he had received from the Galilasan prophet. 
There was nothing in the whole character or life of Jesus which 
Judas could recollect as being any mitigation of the offence of 
betraying him. If Jesus had ever done a wrong, or spoken a 
word which could warrant the suspicion that he might in some 
way be injurious to the people, Judas would have employed it as 
an argument to justify himself to himself. But the life of Jesus 
was faultless, even Judas being judge. He probably felt that 
this death was to be a martyrdom so conspicuous that it would be 
seen by far-off generations, and that his own name would be 
taught to the children of men from age to age as the synonym of 
treachery. 

It was too much for him. He had had two davs and nights of 
intensest anxiety. He gave way under it all. He rushed into 
the midst of the cruel churchmen, now ready to 
despise their base instrument, seeing that they , e re urns 
had gained their end. They were probably ar- 
ranging for the crucifixion in the same chamber in which he had 
first met them, when the plan for designating and arresting Jesus 
was concocted. How gladly they received a recreant disciple of 
Jesus in the time of their political perplexity, and how courteous 
they were to him so long as they hoped to get anything out of 
him, and how glumly they met him when he came back corroded 
with remorse ! He acknowledged his guilt, hoping somehow 
vaguely that it would cover the case and avert the fate of Jesus. 
He shrieked in their hearing, " I have sinned, in that I have be- 
trayed innocent blood ! " He seemed to think that his confession 
might convince them that the whole proceeding was wrong, and 
that they would probably take measures to secure a reversal of 



662 THE LAST WEEK. 

the sentence, which he perceived Pilate would be most ready to 
grant. But he did not understand the men in whose service he 
had enlisted. Their cold reply was, " What is that to us ? Do 
you see to it." It was couched in curter words than the English 
can well put it : " What to us ? You see ! " 

They were not seeking justice and judgment : he was a fool if 

he thought so. They wanted to kill a man who 
ey regar was .^ ^eir way ; that was all : his being innocent 

or guilty was nothing. They had needed Judas 
as a tool ; that was all : they had used him, and now flung him 
away. 

His guilty solitude was thus manifested to Judas. God and 
man, Church and State, seemed turning against him. He went 
into the Temple, which was now deserted. The priests were 
away, and the worshippers. The fate of the Galilsean prophet 
kept all Jerusalem intent and absorbed. His dread loneliness 
came down on the betrayer like a crushing despair. He walked 
into the holy place, where none but the priests should go. He 
was alone with the great God, but lost to all distinctions between 
sacred and profane. He was desolate, darkened, and doomed. 
The bag with the thirty pieces of silver was in his hand. He 
flung it down in the sanctuary ; flung away the remembrancer of 

his guilty error ; flung down, for the priests to 

mgs e gaze upon, the proof of the utter ungodliness of 
money away. t> x ? r t> 

proscriptive churchism. Then he rushed out to 
some desert place, and, all shattered, the wretched man met a 
clouded fate, the record of which by the biographers of Jesus only 
serves to confound our speculations as to the precise mode of his 
death. His life went out in a tumultuous, nameless anguish and 
horror. 

Id the gallery of the Apostolic portraits a rumpled black cloth 
falls down over the face of Judas. 

When the ecclesiastics learned that the money was in the Tem- 
ple, the scrupulous murderers were sorely perplexed. The killing 
of Jesus was not so much matter for their consciences ; but here 
was a question for careful ritualists to study. Here was money 
which it would not be correct to waste, and which by certain 
interpretations of the law could not be put directly to the pur- 
poses of the sanctuary. They devised a method. There was a 
piece of ground — of little importance, having been spoiled foi 



THE SIXTH DAY. 663 

cultivation by the potteries — adjoining the Hill of Evil Counsel, 
on which Caiaphas had a country-seat, in which it is said that the 
death of Jesus had been resolved upon. This _ , F . ,. 
they bought with the money Judas returned, 
and named it Aceldama, and dedicated it to the interment of 
strangers, that is, of such pagans as became proselytes to Judaism, 
for they were too scrupulous to mingle the dust of believers who 
were only converts with that of the sons of Abraham. 



Section 9. — Going to Calvary. 

After other mockings they took the robe from Jesus, and re- 
placed his own garments, and led him away to crucify him. It 
was a part of the punishment that the convicted 

t -, t , -, . T Bearing- the cross. 

person should bear his own cross. J esus was no 
exception. The cross was not that huge combination of timber 
usually imagined and put into pictures. A man of ordinary 
strength would have little difficulty in carrying it; but Jesus 
had passed through so much anguish of mind and torture of body 
that his strength failed him. He does not appear to have been a 
person of prodigious powers of endurance, but rather a man of 
delicate organization. When he fell under the cross the proces- 
sion met a man coming from the country. It was odd that he 
should be moving in a contrary way when all the people had been 
profoundly interested in this tragic affair, and were pouring along 
the streets to see what might be its issue. He happened at the 
juncture needed. Roman and Jew equally were too proud to do 
this menial and degrading service. 

This man, whose name was Simon, came from Cyrene, in Afri- 
can Libya, where many Jews resided, who supported a synagogue 
in Jerusalem. Whether he had come to Jerusa- 
lem to the festival, or had lately resided there, we e yrenian - 
cannot tell. It is not probable that he was a disciple of Jesus ; 
but it is not improbable that, coming suddenly upon this procession, 
and seeing three men bearing their own crosses, and one — paler 
and more delicate than the others — lying prone beneath a load he 
had not strength to carry, Simon should have uttered some excla- 
mation of natural pity. It was enough to suggest and warrant a 
military impressment. Thej made him bear the cross of Jesus. 

The artists have generally misled us as to the appearance of one 



664 THE LAST WEEK. 

crucified and the structure of the cross. It is not known how 
early the mode of capital punishment by crucifixion was adopt- 
ed. Traces of the cross have been found among 
the Scythians, Persians, Egyptians, Carthagini- 
ans, Greeks, and Romans. It was not a Hebrew 
mode. The corpse of a criminal who had been executed might 
be hung upon a tree, but even then it was not permitted to re- 
main all night (Deut. xxi. 22, 23). Jesus suffered the extreme 
punishment dealt by Romans to slaves who had been convicted of 
a capital offence. There were three kinds of crosses : the crux 
decussata, X ; the crux commissa, T ; an d the crux immissa, y. 
The cross on which Jesus died is represented by tradition to have 
been the crux immissa. The upright piece was made just long 
enough to hold the body a few inches from the ground, and to be 
sufficiently in the ground to support itself and its burden. There 
was no support for the feet, as the painters now make in the pic- 
tures, but on the upright part was a projection, or seat, on which 
the weight of the body rested. It would have torn the hands and 
feet fearfully if the whole weight of the body had depended, as 
Jeremy Taylor says, " on four great wounds." 

After Jesus had been relieved of the burden of the cross by 
Simon the Cyrenian, the procession moved forward. It was the 
custom for the heralds to carry the accusation of each convict 
before him, written on a tablet whitened with gypsum. Some 
such epigraph, we suppose, was carried before Jesus, as it was 
afterwards nailed to the cross. The procession grew as it pro- 
ceeded. People came forth of their houses. A great company 
of persons had gathered, and there were many women among 
them, drawn together by the strange curiosity 

e j aug ers ^-^ ^ s £ e ^ ^o gee those who are about to die. 
of Jerusalem. 

These women, without special sympathy with 

Jesus as a religious teacher, but having their womanly compas- 
sions stirred by seeing the sufferings of a man whose appearance 
contrasted with that of the robbers, who were also carrying their 
crosses to the place of crucifixion, broke out into bewailing 
lamentations. It was a touch of nature. The men were all 
against him. The temper of the mob was opposed to any pity for 
him. These women did not love him as tenderly as Mary of 
Bethany, as passionately as Mary of Magdala ; but they were 
women, and women instinctively know the true man ; and thej 



THE SIXTH DAT. 



665 



wept. It moved Jesus. It was the only incident on the way to 
the crucifixion which seems to have arrested his attention. He 
said nothing when he fell beneath the cross. He said nothing 
when they lifted it from his shoulder and gave it to Simon. But 
who can bear a woman's tears ? Jesus turned and said to them, 
•' Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for your- 
selves, and for your children ; for see ! the days are coming in 
which they shall say, i Happy are the barren, and the wombs that 
bare not, and the breasts that suckled not.' Then shall they begin 
to say to the mountains, ' Fall onus;' and to the hills, ' Cover us.' 
For if they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done 
in the dry?" 

The spirit of prophecy came upon him. He seemed to see 
what would occur on that spot forty years afterwards. Touched 

by the womanlv tribute of tears, he did not reiect T , . 

J J ' J Jesus prophesies. 

the proffered sympathy, but seemed to feel that 
he was gazing into the eyes of now happy young mothers whose 
old age should be crushed by a catastrophe of the most over- 
whelming character. He forgot his grief in theirs. Beyond his 
cross and sepulchre he saw the Roman investment of the holy 
city, the siege, the suffering, the horrors, starving mothers snatch- 
ing food out of the mouths of their own children, and other starv- 
ing mothers killing and roasting and eating their own offspring ; 
while men and women and children went creeping through sub- 
terranean passages and foulest sewers; and others, fleeing, hid 
themselves in crevices of mountain rocks from the storm which 
was sweeping Jerusalem. This address to the women was the last 
utterance of patriotism which came from the mouth of Jesus. 

He was then brought to a place which was called Golgotha in 
the Hebrew tongue, meaning " Skull." * The site of the true 
Calvary has of late years been a subject of pro- 
found interest to topographers. That the present 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre is over the place where Jesus died, 
as it is professed, cannot be believed by those who examine the 



Golgotha. 



* " Golgotha means Skull, and the 
place is not called Kpaviwv towos, i. e., 
place of skulls, but Kpavtov, i. e., skull. 
Luke uses Kpaviov." — Lange. 

The word "Calvary" occurs in our 
authorized version only once, Luke 



xxiii. 33, and there it is not a proper 
name in the original, but was adopted 
literally by our translators. The He- 
brew Golgotha, the Greek Kranion, and 
the Latin Calvaria all mean the same 
thing, a skull. 



THE LAST WEEK. 

history and the spot free from the influence of tradition. Too 
much stress has been laid on the erection of a basilica on this spot 
in the early centuries. Churches may have been built to com- 
memorate facts when there was no intent to designate sites, as we 
know that the Church of the Ascension, built by the Empress 
Helena, is not within sight of the spot from which Jesus ascended. 
The true site must meet all the conditions of the history. These 
are six, namely : 1. It was without the then existing walls of Je- 
rusalem, Matt, xxvii. 31, 22 ; xxviii. 11 ; and Paul in Hebrews 
xiii. 12. 2. It was near the city, John xix. 20. 3. It was popu- 
larly known as " The Skull," Matt, xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22 ; Luke 
xxiii. 33 ; John xix. 27. 4. It was near a gate to a leading thor- 
oughfare, Matt, xxvii. 39 ; Mark xv. 29 ; Luke xxiii. 26. 5. It was 
a conspicuous spot, Matt, xxvii. 55 ; Mark xv. 40 ; Luke xxiii. 49. 
6. It was near sepulchres and gardens, John xix. 38-42. Not one 
of these propositions can be affirmed of the spot on which the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands, which is a low place in- 
side the old walls, off the thoroughfares, and where no tombs would 
be allowed. All these six particulars meet in an elevation called 
the Grotto of Jeremiah; a short distance north of the Damascus 
Gate. It is outside the city. It is near. It is conspicuously 
shaped like a skull, and from almost every point of view reminds 
the beholders of a skull. It is near what is still the entrance to 
the great thoroughfare from the north of Judsea and all Upper 
Syria. It can be seen from almost every elevation about Jerusa- 
lem, and looks down on hills that look down on the modern Church 
of the Sepulchre. According to Josephus, it was a place of tombs 
and gardens ; and even now " the number of rock tombs at this 
place, and the extent and beauty of some of them, impress the 
stranger with the wealth and splendor of the ancient Jewish capi- 
tal." (Dr. Porter's Rand-booh, i. 93.)* 

When they reached the spot, before proceeding to crucify him, 

they offered him a drink composed of sour wine, in which myrrh 

had been dissolved. There seems no proof that 

this was a Roman custom. Lightfoot quotes from 

the Talmud : " To those that were to be executed they gave a 

grain of myrrh infused in wine to drink, that their senses might 



* See True Site of Calvary, by Mr. 
Fisher Howe, published by A. D. F. 
Randolph & Co., New York, a capital 



treatise on this whole question, contain- 
ing much authority in support of the 
position taken in the text above. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 667 

be dulled ; as it is said, ' Give strong drink to them that are ready 
to die, and wine to those that are of a sorrowful heart.' " But 
this narcotic Jesus refused. He would have nothing to dim the 
clearness of his vision or enfeeble the vigor of his intellect. 
Then they crucified him. 

Section 10. — From Nine o'clock to Noon. 

It was now nine o'clock in the morning of Friday, 7th of 
April. 

On each side of him was a thief crucified. It does not appear 
that Jesus was submitted to any torture beyond that which was 
inseparable from crucifixion, and beyond what 
the two thieves endured. His being crucified ^ tormentors, 
with them may have been intended as an indig- 
nity ; but perhaps simply came to pass because it was customary 
to have executions at this feast. His disciples declared that in 
that fact was a fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah (liii. 12), " He 
was numbered with the transgressors." While his executioners 
were performing their work, Jesus prayed for them: "Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was touching 
and characteristic. He does not say, "I forgive you." That 
would be to allude too distinctly to the wrongs he was suffering. 
He thought of their guilt, not his own sufferings. It was a prayer 
of pure unselfishness. 

When they had set up the cross they sat down to watch it, as 
their duty was. The usage was to crucify convicts naked, and 
the clothing fell to the executioners as a perqui- 
site. In the case of Jesus they had no difficulty ffarmen t 
with his outer garments, but when they came to 
his inmost article of dress they found it a strange fabric, without 
a seam, woven throughout. It may have been the product of ma- 
ternal love. It may have been the handiwork of the tender and 
loving Mary of Bethany, or the passionate Mary of Magdala. 
How little did love think, as love's fingers wove it, to what tor- 
ture the precious body it was to cover should finally come. There 
was something about it which made even rude Roman soldiers 
pause. They determined not to tear it ; and so cast lots. Again 
his disciples saw a prophecy fulfilled. In Psalm xxii. 16, 18, it 
is said, " The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me ; they 



668 THE LAST WEEK. 

pierced my hands and my feet. They part my garments among 
them, and cast lots for my vesture." This their loving hearts ap- 
plied to Jesus. 

When Pilate felt himself compelled to sentence Jesus he made 
out the accusation on which he had condemned him. This haa 

Th . , probably been carried before Jesus, and was now 
attached to the cross over his head. It was writ- 
ten in Hebrew, and in Greek, and in Latin — in the language of 
the populace, of the cultivated foreigners, and of the Roman 
officials. It was this : — 

"JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS." 

The Roman judge thus decided that Jesus had no guilt ; that 

nothing had been substantiated against him ; for this is no crime 

„ , ,. . that his name should be Jesus, that he should 

Cassars verdict. / 

either have been born or have lived in Nazareth, 
that he should have been literally or somehow figuratively a king 
of the Jews. It is the assertion of Caesar's government that Jesus 
was without crime. Personally to Pilate it was more. It was a 
gratification to be able to fling this slur in the faces of the persis- 
tent ecclesiastics who had coerced him. It is as if he had said, 
" This poor forlorn peasant, hanging on this cross, is good enough 
king for these Jews." Or it might mean, " They said they would 
have no king but Caesar : I crucify Jesus : if he be their king he 
is a dead king, and the nails by which I fasten him to the cross 
bind them to their rejection of all kings but Caesar." 

The high-priests were not slow to see this. They chose, not- 
withstanding their averment that they would have no king but 
Caesar, to leave that question open. They were very loyal eccle- 
siastics, and the history of the world shows how far such men are 
to be trusted. Pilate had no faith in them. They rushed back 
to his palace, where he must have sat moody over the events of 
the day in which he had played so conspicuous and disagreeable a 
part. They called his attention to the character of the epigraph 
on the cross. They prayed him to change it, at least so as to show 
that it was only a claim set up by Jesus. His surly answer was, 
" What I have written, I have written." With that he dismissed 
them. 

Crucifixion was a tedious mode of execution. The soldiers 
took out their implements for gaming and sat down to play while 



THE SIXTH DAY. 660 

they keep guard over the crucified. At almost every public exe- 
cution there are displays of bitter feeling and outbreaks of grim 
humor. It is not a means of grace to see a fellow- 
being tortured, however guilty. The cross was set 
up beside a thoroughfare. Those who passed by saw it. Some one 
of these recollected what had been testified at the trial, so called, 
and he wagged his head and taunted Jesus, saying, " You who de- 
stroy the Temple, and build it in three days, save yourself, if yon 
are the Son of God, and come down from the cross." This revil- 
ing was not confined to the lower populace. The chief priests 
took it up, and probably walking in front of the cross, or stand- 
ing near enough for Jesus to hear, they said among themselves, 
not addressing him, " He saved others ; he cannot save himself. 
If he be the Messiah, let him save himself. He is the king of Is- 
rael ! Let him now com© down from the cross, and we will be 
lieve on him. He trusted in God ; let Him now deliver him, if 
He will ; for he said, 'I am Son of God.' " 

The spirit of reviling spread itself. The Roman soldiers, hav- 
ing no ecclesiastical bias and no theological views, began to echo 
the taunt of the populace and the priests. They 
offered him vinegar to drink. They mocked. 
They also said, " If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.' ' 
That apparently forlorn and helpless peasant-prophet on the cross 
made great contrast with Caesar's grandeur on the Palatine Hill 
in Rome, and with the barbaric splendor of some of the kings 
these soldiers had helped to conquer. The soldiers said to him 
directly, " If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." They 
would like to see him do it. It would be a marvel to see a man 
disengage himself from the cross. If he should attempt it, he 
would find Roman valor superior to any legerdemain or terrify- 
ing magic. If the Jews around these soldiers were not utterly 
obtuse, they must have felt that this insult reacted upon them in 
their civil and their ecclesiastical positions. These rude warriors 
from the Tiber were stamping out their State and their Church 
in Jesus. 

Even one of the thieves, in the recklessness which often befalls 

men who are about to perish, began his raillery. 

,, T/ , , -, r . , ,, *■.>!•« The impenitent 

,w JLi you are the Messiah, said he, " save your- ^^ 

self and us, my comrade and myself." This man 

is a perplexing study. Nature calls for sympathy in behalf of 



670 THE LAST WEEK. 

one who was in like sufferings with himself. -He knew nothing 
against Jesus personally. If they had not been friends in life 
they might have been friendly in death. The world was all 
agviinst them both; why should they not make common cause, and, 
as far as possible, sustain each other in this last dark passage of 
their lives ? But no ; he turns upon him, he joins the mad crowd 
of persecutors. Is it that it was some relief to this man to have 
the tide of the public hate turned away from himself towards Je- 
sus ? Is it that we are always gratified to find that there are 
others more obnoxious than ourselves ? Whatever the motive or 
the temper of the man, his conduct was another pain inflicted on 
Jesus. 

But the other robber was not so obdurate. He rebuked his 
comrade. " Do you not fear God, seeing that you are in the 

same condemnation? And we indeed justly; 
The penitent ,. . . ,, , -. r 

fcMef tor we are receiving the due revvard or our 

deeds; but this man has done nothing amiss." 
He then turned his eyes towards Jesus and said, " Jesus, remem- 
ber me when you shall come in your kingdom." Here was a 
marvellous confession. What this man could have known of Je- 
sus prior to this time we have now no means of learning. Pie 
may have known his whole history, and much as it had interested 
him, he had not until this moment been able to see in Jesus the 
sign of his being Israel's king. He may have been of that class 
of turbulent Jews who restlessly longed for the coming kingdom 
and the coming king, those Chiliasts who looked for a thousand 
years of temporal glory to Israel, and were not unwilling occa- 
sionally to make a blow at the Roman power, however futile that 
blow might be. In any event, he had seen Jesus coming forth to 
execution ; had heard his prophecies to the daughters of Jerusa- 
lem ; had heard his great prayer for his executioners ; had regarded 
his bearing under the storm of abuse which had been poured 
upon him ; had seen the superscription on the cross ; had witnessed 
the intense excitement of the ecclesiastics. But, after all, there 
are those things producing faith which cannot be described. He 
believed in Jesus. 

Jesus did not repel his faith. He accepted it. The man had 
a sense of guilt and helplessness. He believed in the power of 
Jesus to save him somehow. He was so humble and modest that 
he did not interrupt the suffering Jesus with a plea that he woul<? 



THE SIXTH DAT. G71 

help him now. He was willing to die for his offence against soci 
ety. But lie felt that Jesus was a royal personage and had a king 
doni. He plaintively begged that when he began 
his reign Jesus would not wholly forget his fellow- , . 

" J ° mm . 

sufferer in Golgotha. The accents of the plead- 
ing came to Jesus amid the hisses and groans and taunts and 
hateful uproar of his infuriated enemies. Jesus looked at the 
dying man and smoothed his rough passage to eternity with this 
reply : " I assuredly say to you that you shall be with me in para- 
dise to-day." 

What perfect confidence is here ; what an assurance of power ; 
what a claim over the future ; what a pledge to another ! He 
spoke as one to whom paradise belonged — who held the keys of the 
gardens of the Future and Immortality. Bound upon the cross 
he ruled the spiritual world, and pledged to meet his fellow-suf- 
ferer on the hither side of the grave. Together on the cross, they 
should be together in happiness. There was no confusion of idea? 
here, no loss of confidence, no breakdown, no despair. He makes 
no reply to raillery, but has a quick loving answer for faith. 

Jesus was not totally forsaken by his friends. The majority of 
the disciples had been scattered by the tragic events of the pre- 
ceding night. Judas had betrayed him, and 
Peter had denied him, and the others had fled, f , 
except John and the women. The beloved dis- 
ciple came back. Love in him was stronger than terror. The 
women came in full force from the first, and through the morn- 
ing " all his acquaintance," that had come from Galilee, became 
sympathizing witnesses of his sufferings. Among the women are 
named his mother, and his aunt Mary, wife of Cleophas, Salome, 
the mother of James and John, and Mary of Magdala. There 
were many other women. These all stood afar off. Modesty 
would have deterred a nearer approach to the naked person of 
the holy man they all so tenderly loved and greatly revered. 

During the first three hours he seems to have had no conver- 
sation with his friends. As it nea;cd noon there was coming 
upon him a renewal -of that heart-agony which 
had made the bloody sweat of Gethsemane. He 
looked upon his friends. He made no explanation of his position 
as being so contrary to all they had hoped and desired. It 
seemed as if his was to be a lost cause, and as if his very name 




EOCE HOMO AUCH. 




■^vv. ■■.;..,, 




;'!i f'( } 






W 



mmtmtMm .* 



672 THE LAST WEEK. 

was being consigned to endless ignominy. He saw his mothei 
standing near. She and John had approached, drawn by theii 
intense love, which controlled every other sentiment, whether oi 
fear or disappointment. 

The relation between Jesus and Mary was peculiar. Mary was 
his mother. He had spent his earlier years in her society. Even 
after the display of his extraordinary spirituality 
at twelve years of age he was subject to her. 
She treated him with a kind of maternal authority which was 
strangely mingled with awe, as for a superior being. There had 
been miraculous circumstances about his birth. She never forgot 
them. There is a veil over the years intervening from his twelfth 
to his thirtieth year of age. We do not know the temper and 
style of the intercourse between this exceptional mother and this 
marvellous son. But after he entered on his ministry it is clear 
to see that his whole behavior was such as to impress her that she 
had no maternal control over him. Very distinctly and firmly 
was this done in Cana of Galilee, at the changing of water into 
wine. It will be recollected that on another occasion, when his 
kinsmen began to think that much zeal was crazing him, and 
went to take him home, Mary accompanied them, and when she 
sent him her name, as having some authority, he returned for 
answer that he loved those who listened to his teaching more than 
his kinsfolk who were not believers ; that they were more to him 
than even his mother, when she stood in the way of his high and 
holy work. 

It seems really a very difficult relation to understand, and much 
more difficult to maintain. If it be granted that he foresaw the 
spread of his religion, it is very plain to see that he determined 
that no one, not even a woman, not even his mother, should have 
a share in the worship which the world was to give him. 

But he had a clean, clear human heart. He saw the sword en- 
tering Mary's soul. He did not call her " mother ; " he gave him- 
self no such indulgence. Looking at John he 
ary give, i o g& . ^ u ^oman, see vour son j » Looking at Mary, 

and addressing John, he said, " Behold your 
mother ! " It is as if the feeling he had for Mary in that hour 
was a sentiment he entertained towards all womanhood that is 
stricken and forsaken. " Woman : " that was the dying son's title 
for his mother. He had no title for his nearest male friend. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 673 

But he met their several necessities. Mary needed some one to 
take his place ; John needed a charge to divert his heart from 
its breaking grief. It was an announcement of fitness. Her 
nephews, who had been his playfellows, and Mary's other sons, 
were not spiritual kinsmen of Jesus. John was. It was fitting 
that these two should live thereafter in near relationship and 
found a household which should be a rallying-point for all the 
believers in Jesus. 

John immediately took Mary away from the painful spectacle 
of the cross, and ever thereafter she lived in his house. 

The ecclesiastical party had rolled back from Pilate's palace to 
Golgotha, and had been engaged, as we have seen, in heaping in- 
dignities and insults on the dying Jesus. 

Section 11. — From Noon until Three o'clock. 

It was mid-day — the sixth, the sacred hour. The sun was in the 
splendor of a Syrian noon. Then came a mysterious thing. The 
earth began to darken. It was not an eclipse. It was at the full 
of the moon of the Passover. The darkness did not begin in the 
sky, but on the earth, as we learn from Luke, who, of all the bio- 
graphers of Jesus, seems the most careful observer of physical 
phenomena. The darkness spread itself outward and upward 
until the sun was shrouded. It was a darkness 
which obliterated outlines. The Temple, the tower, 

1 ' 7 ness. 

the city walls disappeared. The people in Jeru- 
salem could no longer see the crowd swaying about in Golgotha. 
The priests lost sight of their victim. The crucified thieves could 
no more see each other. The Roman soldiers could not discern 
their dice. Mary of Magdala could not see Jesus. For three 
hours men stood, or sat, or lay down. Jesus was in an agony. It 
was a long three hours for the sufferers, for the persecutors, for 
Pilate, for the friends of Jesus. "What was said or done we know 
not. What was thought, we can only conjecture. The world 
had dropped down into the core of darkness. All was night. 
Heaven, earth, the heart of man, the minds of the wicked and 
the souls of the just were in darkness. When Mary's son was 
being born, mid-night became a splendor. When Mary's son was 
being slain, mid-noon became a horror. 
The eighth hour came. That darkness passed away as myste- 
43 



674 THE LAST WEEK. 

riously as it had come. The pent up agony of Jesus found vent 
He shrieked. His cry was articulate. The biographers have pre- 
The c served the very syllables. It was in his mother 

tongue, the Aramaean, and reminds us of an 
observed fact, that men in dying frequently speak their original 
dialect most accurately. The words with which Jesus thrilled 
the crowd were these : n ?npnto nsb ^x ifi&x, Elohee! ', Elohee' ', 
lammawh! sehakthanee' ', "My God, n*y God, why hast Thou 
forsaken me ? " 

On any theory of the nature of Jesus and his character these 
words, under the circumstances, are mysterious. It must be ad- 
mitted that he was not more afraid of dying than 
other men, nor more afraid of being dead. His 
shrinking from death, so far as we have been able to detect, was 
merely the instinct of life. He could have saved himself. Up 
to Wednesday, nay, even up to Thursday night, there do not ap- 
pear to have been any insuperable obstacles to his escape from 
the ecclesiastical party, his return to Galilee, or his departure into 
another country until this storm should be overpast. Of all this 
he was plainly aware, and yet declined to avail himself of them. 
He had not rushed upon death. He did not flee from it. He 
had at other times passed through infuriated mobs and walked 
away as if possessing a charmed life. Now he makes no effort to 
escape. He had exhibited superordinary power in healing dis- 
eases, in controlling the elements, in raising the dead. He no 
more attempts to exercise that power for his own deliverance than 
the vulgar thief who is crucified at his side attempts a miraculous 
deliverance of himself. Jesus had always professed to experience 
in his inner consciousness an unbroken oneness with the eternal 
God, of whom, as related to himself, he spoke as Father, giving 
the word an emphasis deeper than any other man ever gave to 
his claim of human relationship with man or God. Now he 
speaks not as if he and the Father were one, as he had often as- 
serted, but as if they were two, and not only distinct but now 
separated. In its form it is an intensely passionate appeal. What 
did it signify ? He was a good man dying in martyrdom for 
loftiest and most precious things. He was not God-forsaken. No 
man ever is who does not forsake God. Is there any better ex- 
planation than that in his great spiritual agony there was a sub- 
jective, not an objective abandonment? He felt as though God 



THE SIXTH DAY. 675 

and all were lost. He was certainly enduring an agony with 
which the pains, the fevers, the thirsts, the misery of crucifixion, 
had nothing to do. It was Gethsemane's hour and power of 
darkness — whatever that was — once beaten down, now risen up 
again and rushing upon the soul of the dying Jesus. As it smote 
him he shrieked this articulate utterance of his sense of agony. 

The light came back to the hills, the city, and Golgotha. Men 
raised themselves. The cloud had rolled away, and with the 
clearing sky came the loud cry of Jesus. Per- 
haps in that darkness the consciences of his mur- . 
derers began to be painfully uneasy. They caught 
the first words of the cry, "Elohee, Elohee." Elijah among the 
Jews was the patron of the distressed. Moreover, it had been 
prophesied that Elijah was to precede the Messias. Some said, 
"He calls Elijah." The others said, "Stop! let us see if Elijah 
will come to save him." I cannot think, with Meyer, that this was 
" a blasphemous Jewish joke, by an awkward and godless pun upon 
Eli ;" and yet almost all the strong names among the commentators 
hold this opinion as firmly as Meyer, or under some modification. 
Could even they indulge in joking then ? The horror of the three 
hours of darkness is followed by a scream from the central cross ; 
and that gentle, holy, low-voiced prophet, who had not cried in 
their streets nor been ever boisterous, who had been silent before 
the high-priest, and silent before the procurator, and silent amid 
the jeers and hisses of a mob, and silent under that pall of super- 
natural darkness, now thrills the multitude by a cry so fearful and 
so piercing that if ever human call had answer from the invisible 
world, and was calling for any other soul, that soul, it would seem, 
must come. Perhaps the power as well as the hour of darkness 
had passed away. Perhaps Elijah was about to come. Perhaps 
the tawny, terrible prophet of Carmel would in a few moments 
descend into Golgotha, set free the prisoner from the cross, and 
with superhuman power tear down, and with the fierceness of one 
to whose prayer fire fell from heaven, scatter priest and procura- 
tor, Church and State, Jew and Gentile, and inaugurate the 
splendors of the Messianic reign. 

This cry continued to puzzle the materialists who stood around 
this extraordinary sufferer, until another saying came from Jesus. 
He simply said, " I thirst." Physiologically and psychologically 
this may indicate that his agony was closing. The spirit which 



676 THE LAST. WEEK. 

had been so strung np that it could think of nothing which merely 
concerned his body, was now relaxing. He was passing from out 

the hour and from under the power of darkness, 
and dies g°™g on ^ °^ a battle victorious but wounded. It 

may be noted as indicating him to be in the 
full possession of his faculties, in the fulness of his bodily 
strength, and by no means suffering death as an effect of cruci 
fixion, seeing that this is only the beginning of that terrible thirst 
which burns in those who are lingering on the cross. This cir- 
cumstance seems quite incidentally mentioned by John (xix. 28) 
and by some other of the biographers, and yet it is of great im- 
portance. In response one of the Horn an soldiers ran and took a 
branch of hyssop, a plant probably growing near, the stock of 
which we know was about two feet long. So low did the cruci- 
fied hang that when the soldier fastened a sponge to this stock, 
and filled it with the sour common wine, or vinegar, which they 
mingled with their water, it was quite easy to lay it on the mouth 
of Jesus. He took it, and said, " It is finished." Then calling 
out with a loud voice, "Father, into thy hands I commit my 
spirit," he bowed his head and died. 

The darkness which had come upon the whole land had reached 
its consummation in an earthquake, which rent the rocks in the 

neighborhood, and so moved the Temple that, at 
An earthquake. .-,-.'■, i -• . .1 

the very hour when worshippers were thronging 

into the holy place, and the priests were kindling the lamps before 
the veil which divided the holy from the holiest place, that strong, 
well-woven, annually-renewed veil split from top to bottom, and 
laid open before the startled attendants that sacred spot where the 
wings of the cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat in the ark of 
the covenant, a spot no feet but those of the High-priest might 
tread, and a sight which no eyes but his might behold. The stone 
sepulchres around the city were broken by this convulsion in na- 
ture, and the stone doors were jarred off their hinges, and a few 
days after some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were visited b^ 
holy people whom they had seen dead and buried. 

The Roman centurion who was in charge of the execution re- 
mained with his guard through all these terrifying phenomena. 

They had ceased to amuse themselves with dice. 

They stood watching the victim. When their 
commander saw what was done he exclaimed, " Certainly this wae 



THE SIXTH DAT. 677 

a righteous man. Certainly this was a Son of God." He had 
seen men die, civilized and barbarian. He knew what Roman 
fortitude was. He knew what the crucifixion was. But here was 
something different from all he had ever witnessed. The fact is, 
that Jesus did not seem to come under the supreme effects of 
physical torture. He did not seem to die, in the sense that the 
soul was pressed from the body by pain, but he " gave up the 
ghost." It was apparently a voluntary dismissal on his own part 
of his soul from his body. No felon ever died so. Moreover, the 
mythology of his country had trained the soldier to believe that in 
earlier days the gods had come among men. He looked at Jesus. 
His mind ran rapidly over the phenomena which had filled the 
last six hours. The conviction came upon him, that if ever any 
of the kith and kin of the gods had dwelt in flesh, this was 
one of them. The Jews had condemned a good man : that was 
an outrage. They had caused the crucifixion of a god : that was 
a horror. It was the verdict of a pagan on one of the crimes of 
the church. Conscience began to do its work in some of the com- 
mon Jewish people. They smote their breasts and went home 
from this frightful scene, not knowing what form the vengeance 
of Jehovah might take. 

Section 12. — From Three <? clock until Evening. 

This was Friday, 3 o'clock p.m. That evening was to begin the 

Sabbath — the specially sacred Sabbath of the Passover festival. 

There remained only two or three hours. Ac- 

,. TT , t .r, ill , i A ritualistic dif- 

cordmg to Hebrew law, it one had been stoned ficulty 
to death for blasphemy, and his corpse hung upon 
a tree, it must be removed before night (Deuteronomy xxi. 23), 
and this regulation would be scrupulously observed on the eve of 
the Paschal Sabbath. The leaders of the ecclesiastical party, 
who had not shrunk from conspiracy, and lying, and blasphemy, 
and the murder of the innocent, these ritualistic Puritans could 
not endure that their feast should be defiled by the sight of 
three crosses hanging near Jerusalem on the high Sabbath of 
their church. Moreover, they did not know what effect the sight 
of the body of the innocent Jesus might have upon the fickle pop- 
ulace. They might still rescue him. The Pharisees did not now 
know that he was dead. They had a political reason, and it 



678 THE LAST WEEK. 

always was the manner of the hypocrite to cover a politic design 
with a religious profession. So they went to Pilate to ask that the 
death of the three crucified men might be hastened by the break- 
ing of their legs, and that the bodies might be buried. Pilate had 
no care now as to what might happen. He consented. 

The rude executioners did not hesitate with the two thieves. 
They were soon dispatched. But when the soldiers saw Jesus 

they were convinced that he was thoroughly 
killed dead. It were a wanton act to crush his limbs. 

He had been so good and gentle through it all ! 
There may have been something in his very looks which inspired 
a sense of delicacy. The phenomenon attending his death may 
have awed them. They forbore. 

John had returned from attending Mary, the mother of Jesus, 
to a place of retreat in the city. He was witness to an incident 

which he recorded, probably, to meet a certain 

suggestion of his day, but which throws light on 
a question important in our own. One of the soldiers, more 
daring and hardened than the others, in order to make assurance 
doubly sure, thrust a spear into the side of Jesus, and forthwith 
there issued water and blood. The remarkable events of the 
past few hours, and the certainty of the death of the condemned, 
had probably removed all restraint, and any one might approach 
the cross. It was so low, — not lifting the body many feet above 
the ground, as the painters have it, — that John could distinctly 
see what was going forward. When his account was written, it 
had not yet been suggested that Jesus had not died but had 
passed into a swoon from which he subsequently revived ; but 
the Gnostics afterwards maintained that it was not flesh and 
blood that hung upon the cross, nor the real Jesus, but a resem- 
blance of Jesus. v 

This statement of facts John connects with two passages from 
the sacred Hebrew books, namely, those which provided that not a 
bone of the paschal lamb should be broken (as Exodus xii. 46, 
and Numbers ix. 12), and the passage in Zechariah (xii. 10) in 
which John undoubtedly understood the prophet as predicting 
that the people should pierce Jehovah in the person of the Mes- 
siah, and should have great grief therefor. But the phenomenon 
of the outflowing blood and water brings us to the question of 
the physical causes of the death of Jesus. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 679 

They manifestly were not the causes ordinarily found in cruci- 
fixion. Jesus died in six hours after he was lifted to the cross ; 

no other person is known to have died so soon. 

o i ., , , n , , -,, Physical causes 

borne pulpit orators are accustomed to dwell on f death f Je 

the horrors of crucifixion. Whatever they were, 
they were such as were common to all persons who were cruci- 
fied, and may be as pathetically assigned to the thieves as to 
Jesus. Crucifixion was not an extremely painful or rapid mode 
of execution. Sharp spikes were driven through portions of the 
body where no injury was done to any vital part. There was not 
a great effusion of blood ; sometimes almost none. There was 
not a very great pressure on the wounded portions, almost none 
on the feet. Death was not caused by the wounds inflicted, nor 
were they extremely painful, as many persons have received them 
without a murmur, and survived on the cross for very many 
hours, even for days. Some have been taken from the cross after 
hours of suspension and been healed. The convict was to expire 
by sheer exhaustion of nature and the nervous irritation produced 
by the fretting of the flesh where the nails were inserted. 

The thieves had as yet begun to show no signs of even faint- 
ing. Jesus was as able to endure as they. He was a young man, 
a little past thirty. lie had been reared care- 
fully. He was perfectly virtuous. 'No excesses tet 
had told upon his constitution to make him pre- 
maturely old. He had lived temperately, yet not abstemiously, 
allowing himself a generous diet, while living within all the 
bounds of the laws of health. He had passed much of his life in 
the open air. He had received no special brutality at the hands 
of his executioners. And yet the man who might have survived 
six days, who, on all known bases of calculation, should have been 
able at least to survive the Paschal Sabbath on the cross, died in 
six hours. What were the physical causes of his death ? They 
were not the processes of crucifixion. 

The clearest, most scientific, and most satisfactory answer to 

the question is in a treatise upon the subject by William Stroud, 

M.D., first published about a quarter of a century 

An i j. • ?• i* i Dr - Stroud' 

ago. All subsequent investigations have con- tlieory 

spired to confirm it. It shall be stated here as 

succinctly as possible. Dr. Stroud says : " It was agony of mind, 

producing Rupture of the Heart." s That suggests the call foi 



680 THE LAST WEEK. 

proof that the heart of Jesus was literally ruptured. If in his 
case, most probably it would occur in other cases, which modern 
science would discover. For the satisfaction of persons not 
familiar with anatomy, Dr. Stroud furnishes the following de- 
scription of the heart : — 

" It is a double muscular bag, of a conical form, lined within and without 
by a dense membrane, and loosely inclosed in a receptacle of similar material, 
called the pericardium. It consists of two principal sacs, 
the right and the left, which lie side by side, and adhere 
firmly together, so as to form a strong middle wall, but have no internal com- 
munication. Each of these is subdivided into two connected pouches, or 
chambers, termed auricle and ventricle, whereof the auricle is round and thin, 
the ventricle long and fleshy ; the two former constituting the base, and the 
two latter the body of the organ. Placed in the centre of the vascular sys- 
tem, the heart promotes and regulates the circulation of the blood, received 
on each side from two or more large veins of a soft and compressible texture, 
and discharged through a single artery which, being firm and elastic, is kept 
constantly pervious. Returning from all parts of the body except the lungs, 
blood of nearly a black color, and become unfit for the purposes of life, is 
poured by two principal veins, called venae cavse, into the right auricle, 
whence, after a momentary delay, it is transferred to the corresponding ven- 
tricle, its reflux being prevented by a membranous valve interposed between 
them. By the powerful contraction of the ventricle it is transmitted through 
the pulmonary artery to the lungs, where, by minute subdivision and con- 
tact with atmospheric air inhaled through the windpipe, it is purified, and 
acquires a bright crimson color. Returning from the lungs by the four pul- 
monary veins, the renovated blood next passes into the left auricle, and from 
thence, in a similar manner, and at the same time as on the right side, into the 
left ventricle, by the contraction of which it is distributed with great force 
through the aorta to the remaining parts of the body, whence it was origin- 
ally derived." 

It is a familiar fact that the sanguiferous system does sustain 

sudden and great changes from the influence of the passions. The 

glistening eye and glowing face are external indi- 

The effect of the & .. i • i ^ , ^ cc m. j •* -u- ^ *■ 

cations, while the person aiiected, 11 nis attention 

passions. ' r 7 

be called to his own condition, becomes conscious 
of coldness in his extremities, a sense of distention of the heart, 
difficulty of respiration, and other distressing symptoms. The 
effect may be so great as to superinduce death, and may be pro- 
duced by any of the passions. History has many examples of 
death from joy. Pliny informs us of a Lacedaemonian who died 
of joy at hearing that his son had gained a prize in the Olympic 



THE SIXTH DAY. 681 

games. Sophocles died of joy at gaining a decision in his favor 
in a contest of honor. Livy mentions an aged matron, who, be- 
lieving her son to have been slain in battle, died in his arms in 
excess of joy on his safe return. Leo X. died of a fever produced by 
joy at the news of the capture of Milan. Dr. Stroud quotes many 
other cases of sudden death from exciting passions, in all which 
we cannot doubt that the decease was caused by rupture of the 
heart, although, for want of examination, that cannot be affirmed. 
The following is Dr. Stroud's description of the modus : — 

" The immediate cause is a sudden and violent contraction of one of the 
ventricles, usually the left, on the column of blood thrown into it by a simi- 
lar contraction of the corresponding auricle. Prevented 
from returning backwards by the intervening valve, and 
not finding a sufficient outlet forwards in the connected artery, the blood 
reacts against the ventricle itself, which is consequently torn open at the 
point of greatest distention, or least resistance, by the influence of its own 
reflected force. A quantity of blood is hereby discharged into the pericar- 
dium, and having no means of escape from that capsule, stops the circula- 
tion by compressing the heart from without, and induces almost instanta- 
neous death. In young and vigorous subjects, the blood thus collected in the 
pericardium soon divides into its constituent parts, namely, a pale watery 
liquid called serum, and a soft clotted substance of a deep-red color termed 
crassamentum ; but, except under similar circumstances of extravasation, this 
distinct separation of the blood is seldom witnessed in the dead body. When, 
however, the action of the ventricle is less violent, instead of bursting under 
the continued injection from the auricle, it merely dilates; but, as in conse- 
quence of this over-distention its power of contraction is speedily destroyed, 
death takes place with equal certainty, although perhaps with less rapidity, 
and in this case as well as in the former one, the blood remaining within the 
heart has been divided into serum and crassamentum." 

Let us now revert to Gethsemane. There the sweat of Jesus 

was as it were great drops of blood. Some passion of prodigious 

force was producing a serious disturbance of his 

circulation. Many cases of like phenomena at- 

J r sweat. 

tending like states of mind are recorded in the 
books. Hervey tells of a man who, under the long-continued 
working of an indignation he was compelled to restrain, fell into 
a hemorrhagic state, attended with extreme oppression in the 
chest, owing to an immense enlargement of the heart and princi- 
pal arteries, exhibiting a slight oozing of blood from the cutane- 
ous vessels. The eminent French historian, De Thou, mentions 
the case of an Italian officer who commanded at Monte-Maro, a 



THE LAST WEEK. 

fortress of Piedmont, in the warfare between Charles V. and 
Henry II. of France, in the middle of the sixteenth century. 
" This officer, having been treacherously seized by order of the 
hostile general, and threatened with public execution unless he 
surrendered the place, was so agitated at the prospect of an igno- 
minious death, that he sweated blood from every part of his 
body." A young Florentine, unjustly put to death by Pope Six- 
tus V., upon being led to execution, discharged blood instead of 
sweat from his whole body. In the German Ephemerides many 
cases are given of bloody tears and bloody sweat. Maldonatus 
refers to " a robust and healthy man at Paris who, on hearing sen- 
tence of death passed on him, was covered with bloody sweat." 
Schenck tells of a nun who fell into the hands of soldiers, and, 
seeing herself encompassed with daggers and swords, threatening 
instant death, was so terrified that " she discharged blood from 
every part of her body, and died of hemorrhage in the sight of 
her assailants." 

So far as I know, no one has yet called attention to the fact 

that, while sudden death may be occasioned by joy as well as by 

srrief or terror, this phenomenon of bloody sweat 

The Gethsemane f , ■■■-,. -, , • ,• • ,i 

gweat has never been noticed except in connection with 

great mental agony. Jesus had this mental agony 
in Gethsemane. It seemed to be in a measure assuaged. It was 
renewed when he was on the cross. Did it not terminate in rup- 
ture of the heart ? Many such have occurred and been examined, 
in which no part of the body exhibited morbid symptoms, but the 
heart was ruptured and the pericardium was filled with serum and 
crassamentum, which popularly are called water and blood. In- 
deed, the crassamentum, or red and clotted portions, contains " all 
the more essential ingredients of the blood," while the serum, a 
mere yellowish liquid, " consists chiefly of water." Dr. Aber- 
crombie, of Edinburgh, gives a case of the sudden death of a man 
aged seventy-seven years, owing to a rupture of the heart. In his 
case " the cavities of the pleura contained about three pounds of 
fluid, but the lungs were sound." Dr. Elliotson relates the case 
of a woman who died suddenly. " On opening the body the peri 
cardium was found distended with clear serum, and a very large 
coagulum of blood, which had escaped through a spontaneous rup- 
ture of the aorta near its origin, without any other morbid appear- 
ance." Many cases might be cited, but these suffice. 



THE SIXTH DAY. 683 

The narrative of the last hours of Jesus, as we have already 
given it from the Evangelists, shows just such a state of mind aa 
has produced the phenomenon of the bloody sweat 

. , , 11111-1 State of mind in 

m other persons ; and the water and blood which Ms lagt hourg 

John noticed as following the soldier's spear, are 
such an exhibition as attends rupture of the heart, although it 
was more than a thousand years after the record was made before 
science connected the two. Every expression of Jesus in Geth- 
semane is such as any man would make in describing sensations 
produced by the effect of mental agony on the physical constitu- 
tion. On that cold night his was not ordinary perspiration. It 
was the hemorrhage which agony produces. He did not die of 
crucifixion. He died of a broken heart while they were crucify- 
ing him. He did not swoon. He was in full possession of his 
powers, as his direction to Mary and John showed. He was in 
full physical strength, as- his cry — his loud cry — showed. At three 
o'clock, if he had endured only the ordinary pains of the crucified, 
he might have been taken down and saved, as the Pharisees show 
that they perceived, by desiring to have his legs broken. Pilate 
marvelled when he heard that Jesus was already dead. The 
agony of Gethsemane had a mortal tendency. The agony on the 
cross was a mortal blow. It was agony ^ — not grief, — not fear. 
If one sweats under grief or fear, it is a scant cold sweat. In 
the conflict of agony the action of the heart is violent, and sweat 
is abundant and warm, and in extreme cases bloody. Fear or 
grief paralyzes ; agony supplies extraordinary strength. In full 
strength, Jesus died suddenly. The water and blood which flowed 
from his punctured pericardium showed that his heart had been 
ruptured. 

WJiat was that agony ? 

He was not afraid to die. He could have avoided death. He 
could raise others from the dead. He was not afraid of men. 
He was not afraid of God. He professed a con- 

P ,,, n \ , n i What was Ma 

sciousness or oneness with God. lie was good. „„.„„„« 

o agony t 

Others have loved him so that they have shouted 
on the cross and at the stake, and died, of exhaustion or of fire, 
happier than conquering kings. But he, so good, so humble, so 
free from all earthly ambitions, so unselfish, — he died of a men- 
tal agony. He had no anger, no bad passions, no sudden dis- 
appointment. He had always expected to die on the cross. He 



684 THE LAST WEEK. 

had told his intimates that unless he died on the cross his life 
would be a failure. He did not avoid crucifixion, and yet, al- 
though he expired on a cross, he did not die of crucifixion. 
He had a great spiritual conflict ; in the agony thereof his heart 
was ruptured. 

What was that agony f 

It is not a question for history. It is a question for each 
reader's heart. It could not have been an agony on account of 
himself : it must have been for others. For whom f That ques- 
tion also steps beyond the limits of history. With Jesus before 
his death the work of the historian here closes. 

There are circumstances recorded of the burial of Jesus which 
are to be noticed as important parts of his history. 

There are two men who seem to have taken a profound in- 
terest in the career of Jesus — one was Joseph. Of him we learn 

that he was of Arimathgea ; that he was an honor- 
Joseph and M- , , ,, . , , , 
codemus a ' 3 e counse ll° r > a rich, a good, and a just man; 

that he was " waiting for the kingdom of God ; " 
that he had not consented to the action of the Sanhedrim in the 
case of Jesus, and, in fact, was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, 
for fear of the Jews. The crucified Jesus drew from him a con- 
fession of attachment which the living Teacher had never been 
able to elicit. The other was Nicodemus, the ruler who had 
gone to Jesus by night, early in the career of the great Teacher, 
and who seems never to have lost his interest in the young 
prophet now come to an untimely and ignominious end. These 
two men took charge of the interment. While Joseph went 
boldly unto Pilate to crave the body of Jesus, Nicodemus went 
into the city to procure myrrh and aloes for his embalm- 
ment. 

The interest they took in Jesus shows how deeply he had 
impressed them. Neither had dared profess their faith in him. 
Perhaps that faith was not well defined. But 
they believed him to be both great and good. 
They had absented themselves from the Sanhedrim which had 
been called together that morning by the high-priest. They 
knew the question to be put to them. Each was probably 
ignorant of the feelings of the other. But they could not vote to 
execute Jesus, and they had not the courage to defend him. Now 
they discover each the other's long regard for Jesus, and they 



THE SIXTH DAT. 685 

tmite in showing delicate attentions to the remains of the cruci- 
fied prophet. Pilate granted the body. Joseph brought a linen 
shroud, and Nicodemus brought the spicery. 

There is a pensive beauty in John's simple statement : " In the 
place where he was crucified there was a garden ; and in the 
garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man 
yet laid." Matthew says that this sepulchre was 
Joseph's " own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock." 
The place was near, and these good men, with pious hands, bore 
Jesus to it, and thus saved him from being flung into a com- 
mon ditch with the malefactors who were crucified with him. 
They seem to have had no helpers. The friends of Jesus had 
fled. His enemies had returned to the city. Alone and solitary, 
these honorable counsellors lifted and wrapped and carried and 
interred the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Joseph rolled np a 
great stone to the door of the tomb. It was " the Jews' prepara- 
tion-day." He and Kicodemus left the garden to prepare for the 
Passover. 

Two women had watched these great men in their humane and 
godly work. Joseph and Nicodemus had not consociated with 

L ' l t "eil ^ esils an( ^ n * s f r l en( l s j but they were probably 
known as men of wealth and distinction. It 
must have been a wonder to these women what interest two 
members of the senate which had condemned Jesus should have 
in the proper preparation and entombment of his body. They 
were too shy to address them, and probably the counsellors did 
not notice the women ; but when the great men went away two 
humble women were left to keep love's vigil at the gate of death, 
Mary of Magdala and her friend Mary the mother of Joses. 
And even they were so thoroughly Jew, that shortly they re- 
turned to the city, and having "prepared further spices and 
ointments, they rested the Sabbath-day, according to the com- 
mandment." 

That Sabbath-day, April 8, a.d. 30, Jesus spent in Joseph's 
sepulchre. 



PAET VIII. 



THE KESUKKECTION OF JESUS AND SUBSEQUENT 

EVENTS. 

FORTY DAYS— FROM APRIL 9 TO MAY 19, AD. 30. 



It was a remarkable Sabbath. The crucified men had been 
removed, Jesus had been buried, the Temple worship had been re- 
sumed, going forward as it had gone for several 

after crucifixion. 



centuries, and the church party would fain have 



had everything move on as if nothing had hap- 
pened. But a great storm had swept the popular mind. Pilate must 
have been moody and disturbed. The disciples of Jesus could 
have had little heart for the Temple services. They loved the 
buried Jesus, and although all their hopes of him and much of 
their faith in his sagacity must have disappeared, their hearts 
were buried in the new sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathsea. The 
priests had two things to trouble them. There was the rent veil 
of the Temple. In the dying agony of Jesus had come a con- 
vulsion which had torn that veil from top to bottom and laid the 
Holiest of Holies open. That must have been an appalling sight. 
His body might be removed from the sepulchre, and thus faith in 
his resurrection be encouraged. That was an anxiety. More- 
over, these politicians recollected what his disciples had forgot- 
ten — his own prophecy of his resurrection. Their recollections of 
his prophecies were accurate, and they supposed his disciples were 
as cunning as themselves, and they knew what they would do 
under similar circumstances. That was the second trouble. 
When the Sabbath was past, the chief priests and Pharisees 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 687 

went to Pilate and said, " Sir, we remember that that deceiver 

said, while he was yet alive, 'After three days I will rise again.' 

Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made 

secure until the third day, lest his disciples come n e , sep c * 

J x guarded, 

by night and steal him away, and say unto the 

people that he is risen from the dead, and so the last deceit be 
worse than the first." Pilate could have been in no sweet mood, 
but there was no reason why he should not grant their request 
He had been forced by them to consent to the death of the young 
teacher : he might as well yield this also. He cared nothing for 
the result, and could have taken no interest in the predictions of 
a man whom he regarded as a harmless and unfortunate fanatic. 
He was cross. Yes, they shall have a guard, these mad priests 
who are frightened by a dead peasant ! If it gratifies them to 
make fools of themselves they may do so : he will not hinder ! He 
said to them, " Ye shall have a watch : go your way, make it as 
sure as you can." So they went and made the tomb secure, roll- 
ing up a stone to its mouth, and sealing it. 

The Roman guard took possession of the sepulchre. 

In the mean time Mary of Magdala and other women, knowing 
that the burial of Jesus by Joseph and Nicodemus had been hur- 
ried, although decent, had gone out on Saturday 
evening, the Sabbath being past, and had pro- Pre P arations f or 

, . t . . .-ip embalming. 

cured sweet spices, and were waiting anxiously for 
the morning which should follow the Sabbath, that they might go 
and anoint the precious body, performing love's last offices before 
Jesus should be left, as they supposed, to lie forever in that grave. 
They knew nothing of the government seal on the tomb, and 
nothing of the Poman guard. They knew that there was a great 
stone at the mouth of the sepulchre. A s, at earliest dawn, they 
approached the garden they questioned how they should remove 
the stone so as to proceed with the embalming. Then they felt a 
preternatural shaking of the ground beneath their feet. Then, as 
they looked towards the sepulchre, there was a preternatural light. 
There had been an earthquake. The stone had been thrown down. 
An apparition as of an angel sat on the stone. His appearance 
had so frightened the Poman guard that they had fallen like dead 
men. Jesus had disappeared from the tomb. The guard had not 
seen him. The great stone had not detained him. His earliest 
biographers give no intimation of the hour of the resurrection. 



688 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

He was abroad at daylight. They represent him as having had 
frequent intercourse with them for forty days, in which he gives 
them no intimation of the hour of his resurrection. It was be- 
tween Friday's sunset and Sunday's sunrise. When he rose he did 
not show himself to the guard : the first fright they had was from 
the angel. He did not show himself to any one until after the 
women had visited the sepulchre. 

There is almost no twilight in Palestine. It is dark ; a glim- 
mer comes in the eastern skies ; then the sun bounds forth. It 
was yet dark as the women came near enough to 
e evo e the sepulchre to see that the stone was gone from 

women. 

its mouth. A terrible suspicion flashed on the 
mind of the devoted Mary of Magdala, that the beloved body had 
been stolen by the malignant enemies of Jesus, and she could not 
conjecture what outrages might have been committed on it. In 
her grief and indignation she rushed back to communicate the 
horrible news to John, with whom Peter then happened to be. 

The other women — Mary, Salome, and Joanna — entered. They 
do not seem to have noticed the angel until they had ascertained 

the absence of Jesus. They were sorely per- 
vision in t e pi exe( j e Perhaps they had gone into an inner 

sepulchre. x ■*■ J ° 

chamber of the tomb, and returned, after finding 

that the corpse was missing, when the angel revealed himself to 
them. Luke says there were two angels, or rather, " two men in 
long shining garments." The women were afraid. They bowed 
their heads. The angel said, " Do not be afraid, for I know that 
you seek Jesus who was crucified. Why do you seek the living 
among the dead ? He is not here. He is risen, as he said. Come 
and see the place where they laid him." He showed them the spot, 
and the grave-clothes lying in order, and then said, " Pern ember 
how he spoke to you when he was yet in Galilee, saying that the 
Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and 
be crucified, and the third day rise again." The women then dis- 
tinctly recalled that prediction. 

The angel added, " Go your way quickly, and tell his disciples / 

even Peter, that he is risen from the dead, and goes before you 

into Galilee. There you shall see him, as he said 

Petr 111688 ^ 6 *° t0 y0U '" The women started off t°wards the city, 
full of mingled fear and joy. They seem to have 
missed another party now approaching the sepulchre. 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 689 

When Mary of Magdala had reached the city she flew to * he 
house of John, with whom Peter was, and rushing in breathlessly 
exclaimed, " They have taken away the Lord out 
of the sepulchre, and we know not where they 
have laid him." This was startling news. Both the men rose and 
went out to the sepulchre. Peter had not yet learned that a special 
message had been sent to him. He had behaved so basely that he 
did not feel as if he were of the number of the disciples. But he 
had repented, and he loved the brotherhood of the disciples, and 
he loved his dead Master, and he would gladly make amends for 
his denials by devotion to the corpse of Jesus. Still the burden of 
the bad memory was on him. He did not go as fleetly as John. 
Both ran ; but John reached the sepulchre first. There a reverent 
awe checked him. He kneeled down and looked at the grave- 
clothes. Peter followed, and went right in. There lay the shroud 
wrapped up, and the napkin, which perhaps Mary of Magdala had 
wound about his mangled head. Everything was orderly. Ho 
had been taken away by neither friends nor foes. The former 
would have had no care for the clothes, or have not removed them ; 
the latter would have torn them away carelessly. It looked as if 
Jesus had risen and carefully folded and laid away the garments 
of the grave, wherewith the hands of respect and love had 
wrapped him. 

Peter induced John to follow him. Peter was puzzled. In 
John there began to spring up some faith. " He saw and be- 
lieved ; " for as yet, according to John's own testimony, " they 
did not know the scripture, that he must rise again from the 
dead." Then they left the sepulchre and went home. 

But Mary of Magdala stood without at the sepulchre, weeping. 
The men might go, but she lingered about the spot where she had 
last seen the body of him whom she loved with 

n i . v. , ..i i a, i tt Mary of Magdala. 

ail ner heart and soul, one was alone. Hers 
was an absorbing love and an absorbing grief. She gazed through 
her tears down into the sepulchre where the dear Jesus had been 
laid. She was flooded with sorrow. She saw the two angels in 
white, but she had no attention to give to even angels. Nothing 
in heaven or earth could interest her but Jesus. They said to her, 
" Woman, why are you weeping ? " She could not be astonished 
or frightened even by so brilliant an apparition as two angels ; but 
she was ready to burst forth when the subject of her love was 
U 



690 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

touched. She sobbed out, " Because they have taken away my 
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him ! " 

What marvellous beauty of loving is here ! " My Lord ! " It 
«vas the emphasis of appropriating affection. He was hers more 
than he was any other's. She loved him more 
than any other woman or any man loved him. 
And he had done everything for her. She did not ask the angels 
for any consolation ; she was inconsolable. She turned to go, and 
through her tears she saw a man standing in the garden. She 
scarcely looked at him. One man filled her heart and brain and 
eyes, and he was dead, and his dear body was stolen. When the 
stranger asked her, " Why do you weep ? whom do you seek ? " she 
thought it was the gardener, and that he must know all about it. 
Her reply was, " Sir, if you have borne him hence, tell me where 
you have laid him, and I will take him away ! " 

What marvellous beauty of loving is here ! " Him " — as if every- 
body must know Mary's " him ! " If it were not considered meet 
for his corpse to be in that garden because he had 
died as a malefactor — although she felt that that 
body, if laid down on God's throne, would sweeten all heaven — 
she would take it away to some place where, without interruption, 
he might sleep the sleep of death, and she might weep the tears 
of the dying. She had not turned to gaze full on the speaker. 
It was Jesus, and she did not know it. He said to her, " Mary ! " 
In his lifetime it is probable that he had never called the other 
Marys with the tone in which he was accustomed to pronounce 
her name, the poor dear friend whom he had brought out of the 
darkness of insanity with the marvellous light of his love. The 
syllables in the familiar tone thrilled her. She turned. She saw 
him. She knew it was Jesus. She sprang towards him saying, 
" Rabboni." It seems that she would have embraced him, but 
Jesus checked her. He said, " Touch me not, for I am not yet 
ascended to my Father : but go to my brethren and say unto them 
that I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and 
your God." 

Mary left him. Her love was obedient. The brilliant moment 
was past. She might not see him again, but he was alive. He 
was to meet the brethren in Galilee. He was not 
the Comforter ; he had not yet come in that cha- 
racter, as he had promised his disciples, because he had not yet 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 691 

ascended to the Father. So Mary of Magdala, lovingest of women, 
out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils, and into whom seven 
angels had come, sad Mary, glad Mary, left her Lord and went 
about the errand on which he sent her. 

The interview was exceedingly brief. Before the other women 
could reach the city, Jesus was with them. He met them. He 
saluted them with "All hail ! " Combining the 
accounts given by Mark and Matthew, a very natu- The other w0 " 
ral history seems to me to be this : The women 
had entered the sepulchre and seen where Jesus lay ; then they 
had the vision of the angels ; then they went out " quickly " and 
fled from the sepulchre, for they trembled and were amazed, "and 
departed with fear and great joy." Leaving the sepulchre in great 
agitation, they may have wandered off from the city quite as 
naturally as towards it ; bat recalling the message of the angel to 
the disciples, their joy predominated ; their mental equipoise began 
to return. To make up the lost time, they began to run, and thus 
they met Jesus. They knew him at once. As soon as he saluted 
them they fell at his feet, clasping them and rendering him hom- 
age. He permitted in them what he had forbidden in Mary of 
Magdala. Their worship and their feelings were quite different 
from those of the loving Mary. Jesus soothed them, saying, " Be 
not afraid ; go tell the brethren that I go into Galilee, and there 
shall they see me." 

As the women went to bear this message to the disciples, some 
of the watch went to report to the Pharisees, and to consult for 
their own safety. The Sanhedrim assembled. The 
soldiers probably told the facts as they occurred. 
The council was driven to desperation. They had hoped that the 
money given Judas should end the matter. Now there must be 
more bribery. They gave the soldiers u large money," as our 
common version has it ; " sufficient silver pieces " it is in the ori- 
ginal. They instructed them what to say ; it was this : " His dis- 
ciples came by night and stole him away while we slept," They 
a so pledged themselves to stand between them and Pilate, if a 
report of the affair should reach the governor's ears. 

We can readily account for the mental and moral temper of the 
majority of the Sanhedrim. A course of crime 
had blunted their sensibilities. It was natural 
that they should offer money to the soldiers. It was natural thai 



692 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

the soldiers should accept it. Their case was this : having dis- 
charged their duty faithfully, they were in such circumstances 
that if tried by a military court they would be executed. Caesar 
would take no " angel " for an excuse. They had suffered the 
government seal to be violated. They had committed a military 
crime. If brought to trial their doom was sealed. They would 
better make all out of their circumstances that could be made. 
They took the money, and took the pledge of the priests, and went 
off and awaited events. 

But there is no evidence that these soldiers ever told to a mili- 
tary tribunal what the Sanhedrim put into their mouths. They 
could not be worse men than the priests, and not 
such fools as to tell a lie that would convict them. 
It is quite probable that they repeated the stupid falsehood to 
some of the populace, in the presence of some of the priests, to make 
good their bargain. The priests would use it among the vulgar 
people, and thus the report would gain currency among the Jews. 
But the soldiers would not have said so if arrested. " We slept : " 
that was a crime for which death would be inflicted, according to 
imperial law. " They stole : " how could men tell what was done, 
or who did it, while they were asleep ? But it is quite easy to see 
why the soldiers did as they were taught : there was in that direc 
tion some possibility of escape, but none in any other. 

That the body of Jesus could not have been stolen by any one, 
a very slight inspection of the facts must show. If stolen, it was by 
friends or by foes, by the Jewish authorities or by 
gtolen the disciples. The former could not have taken it ; 

for if they had, they would have made an exhibi- 
tion of the corpse after three days, and thus secured a complete 
demolition of the claims of Jesus. The disciples could not have 
done so. The presence of the dead body would be a perpetual 
reminder of the death of their hopes. There would be no stimu- 
J us in that. They had no conceivable reason for stealing the body. 
If they had, they could not have accomplished it. They were too 
few to overpower the guard. If they had made the attack some 
would have been at least wounded, and perhaps killed, and the 
uproar would have aroused the city. But this is not charged. It 
is unreasonable to suppose that all the guard were asleep at once, 
and that at that juncture the disciples stole the body. That would 
have involved the breaking of the government seal on a night 



AKD SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 693 

when tlie moon was at its full, and the city was crowded, and the 
populace was excited. If that had occurred the disciples would 
have been prosecuted. But they never were prosecuted. The 
testimony of the soldiers would then have been called into court, 
and that would have acquitted the disciples and covered the San- 
hedrim with shame. 

There were in the Sanhedrim a few who believed in Jesus, and 
to them — to such men as Joseph and Nicodemus, for instance — 
the early historians must have been indebted for a narrative of 
what had passed in the Sanhedrim, including their infamous and 
stupid proposition to the soldiers. 

When the women returned and made their report the disciples 
did not believe ; but what the women said seemed to them like 
" crazy talk." 

That afternoon two disciples left Jerusalem to walk to Em- 
maus, a village seven miles distant. The name of one is preserved. 
It was Cleopas ; but we know not who he was. 
They started probably about half-past three Emmaus 
o'clock, after the evening sacrifice. They had 
heard the reports which seemed to have been circulated among 
the friends of Jesus, that the sepulchre was empty. As they walked 
they conversed upon the subject nearest to all their hopes and 
fears and interests, the dead Jesus, and what had happened in 
the three eventful days. They were perplexed. They " reasoned.'' 
They were probably striving to reconcile the apparently conflicting 
facts, the claims of Jesus and his manifest power, with the igno- 
minious death which he had suffered. Jesus drew near and 
walked with them ; but they were so absorbed that they did not 
notice him. 

He spoke to them respectfully in such a way as not to be offen- 
sive even in a stranger. " What are these words that ye exchange 
one with another as ye walk ? " Luke says that 
" they stood with sorrowful countenances." They stran0 . er 
looked at Jesus, but did not recognize him. The 
same historian says, " their eyes were holden that they should not 
know him." Mark says that Jesus " appeared in another form 
unto them." It is to be noticed that some change must have passed 
in the appearance of his person. None of his friends recognized 
him immediately on first sight ; but none failed to recognize him 
afterwards. Who can tell what that change was % It was his 



694 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

own body. They all saw, and some touched him. Was the gross- 

ness of the material body disappearing, and the fineness of the 

spiritual body coming forth ? But we are to record only what are 

the facts in the case. 

When Jesus asked his question the two disciples looked at him. 

There was nothing in the appearance of this stranger to make him 

seem a suspicious person, to be avoided, and the 
Grief of the dis- , r -, . lP , . 

. les tone and manner of his respectful inquiry com- 

mended him to the confidence which these simple- 
hearted men gave him. Cleopas replied : " Are you the only so- 
journer in Jerusalem who has not known these things that have 
come to pass there in these days ? " It was a polite reflection on 
his apparent ignorance. " What things ? " asked the stranger, to 
draw him out. One of them answered, " Concerning Jesus the 
Nazarene, who was a man, a prophet mighty in act and speech 
before God and all the people ; and how the chief priests and our 
rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified 
him." And then, running out into confidential lamentations to 
the attentive and sympathizing stranger, the speaker continued : 
" But we hoped that it had been he who was about to redeem 
Israel ; yet, for all these hopes, this is the third day since these 
things were done. Besides, certain women of our company 
astounded us, who were early at the tomb, and not having found 
his body they returned, saying that they had seen a vision of 
angels, who say that he is living. And certain of those with us 
went to the tomb and found it thus, according also as the women 
had said : but him they saw not ! " 

The stranger had completely won their confidence and tested 
the genuineness of their grief, their faith, their love, and their 
fears. They had even confessed themselves disciples of the pro- 
phet who had seemed to have failed, whose ignominious execution 
had blasted their hopes but not their affection. They even ad- 
mitted him to a knowledge of what was passing in the inner circle 
of the friends of the crucified Jesus. These simple-hearted pea- 
sants were the first confessors. 

Then Jesus replied, " O thoughtless and slow of heart to believe 

all that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not 

., . ,. . , The Christ to have suffered these things and to 
the two disciples. # & 

enter his glory ? " They supposed their Master to 
be The Christ of God : if so, the books held to be sacred writings 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 695 

by the Jewish people pointed to just such a course of affairs as 
had happened to Jesus. Then he began with Moses, and running 
through his writings and those of their prophets, he explained to 
these simple men that those very things which had shaken their 
confidence should be confirmatory of the faith of all those who 
understood and believed the Holy Scriptures. We can never 
know what special passages Jesus quoted and expounded in this 
conversation ; but it is not difficult now to see how the whole sys- 
tem of worship instituted under Moses can be made highly typical 
of what happened to Jesus, to the minds of those who believe in 
him. It was new light to these simple but thoughtful men, and 
they received it gladly. 

Upon reaching the house where they were to abide, Jesus was 
about to take his leave and pass on. But he had been so charm- 
ing a talker, his glowing eloquence had so won 

. . . Jesus .reveals 

the hearts of his two ingenuous listeners, that they ki mse if 

urged him to stay with them. He consented. 
When the meal was spread Jesus assumed the host's place. As 
they reclined at the table he took bread and uttered the usual 
thanksgiving, which, according to the Jewish ritual, was obliga- 
tory where three ate together. There was something in the tone, 
or there was some change come over Jesus, which caused them to 
recognize their dear dead friend, or, perhaps, as he broke the 
bread they saw his wounded hands. " Their eyes were opened," 
says Luke. At that instant Jesus became invisible to them. 

This can scarcely be regarded as the history of a subjective 
process on their part. That both should see the same man, and 
hear the same words through a long discourse, and see him as 
they prepared the meal, and behold and hear him while uttering 
the thanksgiving, and both lose sight of him at once, and the 
whole be a mere subjective fancy of both minds, is not at all in 
accordance with the well-known laws of our intellectual constitu- 
tion. His disappearance is not explained. 

Then they said to each other, " Did not our hearts burn within 
us as he talked to us by the way, and opened the Scriptures to 
us ? " They were so excited at what had happened 
that they arose and returned to Jerusalem. It ., ci ^ re XiTn 
must have been night ; but enough was happening 
to draw the little circle closer together. When Cleopas and his 
3ompanion reached the city they found the eleven Apostles to- 



696 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

getlier and others of the disciples. As soon as they entered some 

one said to them, " The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to 

Simon." And perhaps all the strange occurrences of the day, so 

far as they knew them, were related by the company to the two 

who had just come from Emmaus. 

We do not know when this appearance to Peter occurred. It 

was some time since morning, of course ; but whether it was before 

or after the revelation of himself to the Emmaus 

Jesus appears ,. . , , ,. , . . T , 

, p , disciples, we nave no means or ascertaining. It 

might have been after. There was time enough. 
The company were evidently greatly excited by the appearance to 
Peter. In an earlier part of the day he may have gone to the 
sepulchre, or he may have been wandering about the suburbs or 
through the streets, very disconsolate and unhappy. None of the 
disciples had as much cause for sorrow as he. He had denied his 
Lord and broken into profanity. The last look which Jesus gave 
him must have haunted him. Even if his Master had risen from 
the dead, would he appear to him ? He had forfeited his place. 
Perhaps none of his brother Apostles knew how basely he had 
acted : but Jesus did. Would he allow poor Simon to fall peni- 
tently at his feet? 

Nothing can be more beautiful or appropriate than these first 
appearances of Jesus. He first shows himself to the grief of love 
in Mary of Magdala. He next shows himself to the grief of per- 
plexity in the two Emmaus disciples. He then shows himself to 
the grief of penitence in Peter. It was all in beautiful consis- 
tency with the character he had displayed through his whole career. 

After the assembly had informed Cleopas and his companion 
of what was known in Jerusalem, they, in turn, gave an account 
of their interview with Jesus in Emmaus and on the way thither, 
and especially told of how Jesus was made known to them in the 
breaking of bread. There was great incredulity in the company, 
and mueh perplexity. They all believed that he was no longer in 
the sepulchre ; but his appearance to Mary and the other women, 
and Simon, who professed to have seen him, seemed to them like 
hallucination. The story told by the Emmaus disciples increased 
the perplexity of the company. Jesus was seen so often, in such 
different places, so near the same time, and vanishing so strangely. 
It began to be frightful. It suggested spiritual appearances 
They were mournfully disturbed. 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 697 

It was probably the first time they had been gathered together 
since the supper with Jesus on Thursday night. They were afraid 
of the church authorities, and so the doors were 
shut. Just when they were in most perplexity by f j£* ^^T 1 
all these narratives of preternatural things, Jesus 
suddenly appeared in their midst. Whether he opened the door, 
or was admitted by the doorkeeper, who might have seen that it 
was Jesus, or whether it was accomplished in some way still 
" unknown to our philosophy," we cannot say. Here is the simple 
historical statement. It shows that he was no longer in the grave, 
but was in bodily intercourse with the disciples. As he entered 
he said : " Peace to you ! " It was his usual salutation. But they 
were terrified and affrighted. They thought they saw a spirit, a 
phantasm, a ghost, something produced preternaturally. Their 
nerves were unstrung by the events of the day. They were so 
agitated that they did not notice his salutation. 

He said to them : " Why are you troubled ? And why do rea • 

sonings arise in your hearts ? " He saw that they regarded him 

as some strange "appearance" merely. He re- 

-, 2l n , , t . , ! n Jesus in their 

proved them tor not believing the men and women . , , 

who had seen him and had reported his resurrec- 
tion, thus preparing them for his coming into their midst. He 
exhibited the wounds which they knew he had received in cruci- 
fixion. "Behold my feet and my hands, that it is I myself: 
handle me, and see : for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you 
see me have." 

Whether they touched him or not we do not know ; they might 
have done so. But they were overjoyed; they were too glad to 
believe ; they were full of wonder. The sight of Jesus was first 
terrible, and then glorious. They were in a state of great mental 
agitation, described very naturally by these intelligent historians. 
They behaved just as people would behave who were not playing 
a part or posturing for effect. 

Jesus said very simply, " Have you anything to eat here ? " 
They gave him some broiled fish and some honey-comb. He took 
them and ate, the whole company beholding him. 
And while eating, he said to them : " These are ^ eats wifcb 
the words which I spoke to you, while I was yet 
with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in 
the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, con- 



698 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

cerning me." These are the parts into which they were accus- 
tomed to classify the canonical Scriptures. He showed that they 
all pointed to his death and resurrection. He assisted them, 
opening their understanding, that they might know what the 
Scriptures meant in passages which had been sealed to them. He 
concluded by adding, " Thus it is written that The Christ should 
suffer, and rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance 
for the remission of sins should be proclaimed in his name among 
all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of 
these things : and, behold, I send the promise of the Father upon 
you : but tarry in the city until you be endued with power from 
on high." He cleared up for them a point which was greatly 
dark to the Jewish mind, namely, that The Christ, the Messiah of 
Grod, should be a sufferer. They had so thoroughly misread the 
Scriptures. We need not be surprised at that, when we see how 
traditional readings of the New Testament come to have such 
influence on men, that when one gives a natural and consistent 
interpretation it often seems a shocking innovation. His com- 
mand to remain in Jerusalem must be understood as making that 
their centre and headquarters, as we soon see them ordered to 
Galilee for a season. 

John records that Jesus again said, " Peace unto you ! As my 
Father has sent me, I also will send you." And then he breathed 

on them, and said: " Receive the Holy Spirit. If 

The Holy Spirit. !, ,v . , ., , -,-, £ -., A 

you remit the sins ox any, they shall be remitted 

to them ; and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." 

The act of breathing seems symbolical. These men were from 

that time very different from the men they had been before. 

They were wiser, better, deeper, more holy men. The last words 

are not to be interpreted as conferring upon any corporate body 

of officials the authority to bind upon their fellow-men the sins of 

which they have been guilty, and to forgive authoritatively all 

whom they choose to forgive. The meaning of these words, which 

are here repeated, having been used before, we have discussed 

their significance on pp. 421, 422. 

In addition we may add, (1) That the company addressed were 

not the tw T elve Apostles, because there were other persons present 

to whom the Holy Spirit was given, if given to 

any, and who received this authority quite as much 

as the Apostles, of whom there were only ten present, the place oi 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 699 

Judas II. not having been filled, and Thomas Didymus being ab- 
sent. (2) Moreover, there is not the slightest historical evidence 
that any of this company, whether disciples or Apostles, ever, 
separately or conjointly, attempted to exercise what came long 
afterward, in churchly corruptions, to be called " Absolution." 
This pretence of priestcraft rests itself altogether on a misrepre- 
sentation of this passage. 

We do not know why Thomas was absent. There is no special 
blame to be attached to him. He loved Jesus. He was so de- 
voted to him that when Jesus proposed to return 
into Judsea, to visit the bereaved family of Laza- ., 
rus, Thomas proposed to accompany him and die 
with him (see p. 497). The very love and distress which brought 
the others together may have kept Thomas apart. He was thor- 
oughly stunned by the blow. There seemed nothing left to him. 
He was of that temperament which has its grief aggravated by 
seeing the grief of others. When the disciples had been lifted 
into a great joy by seeing their Master, they found Thomas and 
told him all. They had refused to believe the women ; but they 
had accepted the testimony of Peter and the two disciples from 
Emmaus, before Jesus appeared to them. Thomas declined the 
combined testimony of the whole body of women and men that 
professed to have seen Jesus. 

We may assign many and very diverse reasons for this incredu- 
lity, without supposing Thomas extraordinarily skeptical. It may 
have been partly wounded love, or love that felt that the news 
was too good to be true. His associates were compelled to ac- 
knowledge that Jesus had come to them very much after the 
manner of an apparition, and that his appearance was changed. 
They may have confessed that they had not touched their Mas- 
ter. They could not convince Thomas throughout all that week. 
To their repeated representations Thomas at last gave his decided 
answer : " Unless I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, 
and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." He was all 
the week in this unhappy state of mind. If his friends were mis- 
taken, they were at least happy. 

Another Sabbath passed, and another Sunday. On Sunday 
evening the friends of Jesus were collected again. Thomas was 
now with them. Jesus suddenly stood in their midst, as he had 
done eight nights before. He repeated the usual salutation, 



700 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

" Peace unto you ! " Then turning at once to Thomas, he said, 
" Reach hither thy ringer, and see my hands ; and reach hither tlrv 

hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faith- 
Bemblao-e ^ ess > ^ u ^ believing." Thomas had gazed at him 

through all this speech. It was not a ghost. It 
was not a phantasm. It was The Master. However changed, it 
was undoubtedly he. Thomas knew the voice. The Master had 
not met any of the disciples during the intervening week, else they 
would have told Thomas. Now Jesus knew his very thoughts, 
and repeated his very words, and offered himself to the very test 
which Thomas had proposed. Thomas believed of Jesus three 
things at once — that he retained his personality ; that he could be 
where he would at any moment ; and that he knew all things. 
The whole infidelity of Thomas broke down at once. He ac- 
knowledged all. The resurrection of Jesus was an accomplished 
fact. Here were the pierced hands, and ankles, and side. He 
was omnipresent. He was omniscient. All their preconceptions 
of their Master were below the fact. He was very God. 
Thomas worshipped him, calling him " My God." Jesus recog- 
nized the faith of Thomas in his Godhead as correct, and while 
receiving the homage due only to God, he administered a mild 
rebuke for the slowness of the faith of Thomas : " Thomas, 
you have believed because you have seen me : blessed are they 
that have not seen, and have believed." 



II. 

All these six appearances of Jesus had occurred in or near Je- 
nisalem. It bound the disciples into a company of believers. 

But as yet they had no plan. The eleven Apos- 
G J^ e e e Apostles ** ties left the metropolis for Galilee (Matt, xxviii. 

16), whether at the immediate direction of Jesus 
or at the promptings of prudence we have no means of knowing. 
But at the last supper he had said to them words which were then 
incomprehensible : " After I am risen again I will go before you 
unto Galilee " (Mark xiv. 28). And the angel at the sepulchre had 
reminded the women of that promise, and directed them to " tell 
his disciples, and Peter, that he goeth before you unto Galilee." 
(See p. 689.) They would prudently remain in Jerusalem until 
the close of the Passover. They would then follow the direction 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 701 

of Jesus, and go back to their old homes in Galilee. Beyond that 
the} 7 had no direction, except the knowledge of the fact that they 
were to come back to Jerusalem and await the gift of the Holy 
Spirit. They did not know when that should occur ; in point of 
fact it did not occur until about two months afterward. While 
waiting for the reappearance of their Lord, and further direc- 
tions, they naturally resumed their old employment on which 
their livelihood depended. One evening, on the shore of the Sea 
of Tiberias, Simon Peter said he should go a fishing. Thomas 
Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana, and James and John, and two 
other Apostles, who are not named, were of the company. These 
seven were all experienced fishermen, but they toiled all night 
and caught nothing. 

At break of day Jesus was standing on the shore ; but they did 
not recognize him. It is related of each appearance of Jesus after 
his resurrection that he was not recognized at first 
sight by his most intimate friends. They saw esus F 
the stranger, standing on the shore, as an early 
purchaser of fish might be who stood where he saw the men fish- 
ing and awaited an opportunity to buy. At last he said, " Chil- 
dren, have you any meat ? " The form of the question would not 
arouse the suspicion that it was Jesus. They answered, " No." He 
said to them, " Cast the net on the right side of the ship and you 
shall find." Even this did not reveal Jesus. Any man acquaint- 
ed with the lake might have detected from the shore some sign 
of fish which had eluded their weary eyes. It was an easy thing 
to do ; so they followed the stranger's direction, and they were 
not able to draw the net for the multitude of the fishes. 

John's quick eye first recognized Jesus. He said to Peter, " It 
is the Lord." Since the crucifixion these two men, so much un- 
like, each having what the other lacked, had been drawn into a 
very close companionship. They were in a boat together. Peter, 
always impulsive, pulled on his fisher's coat to go to Jesus. The 
vessel was about three hundred feet from the shore. The othei 
disciples came up to the help of J >im, and they dragged the net 
and the fishes up near enough to the shore to secure them. 

Upon landing they saw a fire of coals, and fish thereon, and 
bread. Jesus directed them to bring of the fish they had just 
taught ; and Simon Peter, perhaps now recollecting how he had 
abandoned John, promptly obeyed the command, and landed the 



702 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

unbroken net with its contents of one hundred and fifty-three 
great fishes. Jesus then said, " Come and dine." Jesus divided 
the bread and the fish. It was a silent meal. A tender awe was 
on the company. The disciples knew it was " the Lord," as they 
had now learned to call him, but they asked him no questions. 

When all had eaten, Peter, who since his denial of his Master 
must have felt that he had largely lost the confidence of his asso- 
ciates, and must have felt very uncomfortable as 
to the opinion which Jesus had of him, was called 
to endure a painful ordeal, which resulted, however, in the re-es- 
tablishment of his confidence in Jesus and of the confidence of 
his brethren in him. Jesus said to him, " Simon, son of Jonas, 
do you love me more than these?" This must have recalled 
to him his boastful professions compared with their reserve, and 
his cowardly desertion compared with their fidelity. His reply 
was, " Yes, Lord ; you know that I love you." He does not now 
rett the proof of his devotion on bragging professions of what he 
woi Id do, but upon the consciousness of his Master, who must 
hav« believed, notwithstanding the dark passage of his momen- 
tary weakness, that Peter loved ; or, if he did not, nothing the 
disci pie could now say would convince him. Jesus replied, " Feed 
my , ambs." Perhaps a brief silence ensued. Jesus then varied 
the cuestion, and, looking down into Peter's eyes, said, "Simon, 
son o c Jonas, do you love me f " Poor Peter had only the same 
reply to make : " Yes, Lord ; you know that I love you." Jesus 
said, k Peed my sheep." After another silence Jesus repeated his 
questi >n : " Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me ? " All this was 
passing in the presence of his associate Apostles. Jesus was most 
tender, but this probing was most painful. But Peter could not 
complain. Thrice had he denied his Master. The others had 
not done so. It was not unfair that he should be called upon 
publicly to make a triple reversal of his triple denial. But 
it pierced Peter to the heart. This third time lie threw his case 
on the knowledge of his Master. " Lord, you know all things ; 
you know that I love you." The "all things" involved Peter's 
denials; but the subject was so distressing to him that he could 
not speak more specifically of what was so shameful in his his- 
tory. Then Jesus replied, " Feed my sheep." It was the com- 
plete restoration of Peter. He was to be a pastor, an under-shep 
herd of the flock of God. 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 703 

Then in tenderness, but to lay on the over-ardent temperament 
oi Peter what should be a balance-weight to his character, Jesus 
intimated to him that he should die a violent 
death. Jesus had never made a prophecy to 
gratify curiosity. He would never be classed with fortune- 
tellers and magicians. But he said to Peter, as indicating his 
affection for him and his confidence in him, " Verily, verily, I say 
to you, When you were young you girded yourself, and walked 
whither you would ; but when you become old you shall stretch 
forth your hands, and another shall gird you, and carry you 
whither you would not go." John, who was present, and who 
records this saying, adds, "This he spake signifying by what 
death he (Peter) should glorify God." John understood it, and, 
of course, Peter did. Perhaps Jesus added some tone or ges- 
ture or word not recorded, which made his speech perfectly 
intelligible to the parties concerned. Peter had once said that 
he would follow Jesus anywhere. Jesus had been crucified. It 
mould be the fate of Peter to follow his Master even to crucifix- 
ion, and thus haA r e his words verified in a sense he had not 
meant. Perhaps it was a melancholy comfort to Peter to know 
that, in any sense, what he had said would come true. 

Then Jesus rose and said to Peter, " Follow me." Peter looked 
at his friend John, who had risen and followed with him, drawn 
by his devotion to Jesus and his friendship for 
Peter. At the last supper John had asked a 
question of the Master at the suggestion of Peter. Xow Peter 
asked a question for John : " Lord, and what this man ? " It was 
a question of mere affectionate curiosity. Jesus replied, "If I 
will that he tarry till I come, what is it to you % Do you follow 
me ! " It recalled Peter to a sense of his propriety and of his 
personal responsibility. It told him nothing about the fate of his 
friend, but the report was circulated among " the brethren " that 
John should not die. He did live to a great age. He is the 
historian of this interview, and adds, "Yet Jesus did not say, He 
'shall not die ; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
that toyoti?" As John's life prolonged itself, that saying of 
Jesus must have come to his recollection very often with very great 
force ; but never perhaps so impressively as when, forty years 
after, he survived the destruction of Jerusalem, a frightful event ; 
which Jesus in his discourses was accustomed to associate with his 



704 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

" coming," We cannot fail to notice the claims which Jesus here 
makes to a complete control over the periods of men's lives. " I 
will," as applied to fixing the limits of hnman life, is the lan- 
guage of the Almighty God, and is blasphemy in the mouth of 
anv one who is not God. 



III. 

It appears from Matthew's account (xxviii. 16) that Jesus had 
appointed a time and a place in Galilee to meet his followers. 
We know of the time only that it was within 
forty days after the resurrection. The place was 
a mountain. It would seem that Mount Tabor would be the 
most convenient place for such an assemblage. The fact that it 
was inhabited is against the theory of those who would make it 
the scene of the Transfiguration, but is rather in favor of its se- 
lection for this meeting, as the inhabitants were Galilseans, and 
would be at least not unfriendly to the followers of Jesus. Taboi 
is six miles east of Nazareth. " Northward it overlooks all the 
confronting highlands of Galilee ; southward it extends far down 
into the plain of Jezreel " (Lange). On the top is a table about 
a mile and a half in circumference. 

This is the only occasion mentioned by any Evangelist which 

can correspond with a fact mentioned by Paul in his first letter 

to the Corinthians (xv. 6). " He was seen of 

w+w„ „f n „ M above five hundred brethren at once." It would 
brethren at once. 

seem that the Apostles had been at pains to 
make this appointment known to all who might be supposed 
to be, in any sense, disciples of Jesus. It was a large gathering. 
Afterwards, in Jerusalem, this company mustered only one hun- 
dred and twenty. While in Galilee, and before this meeting, the 
Apostles had doubtlessly been industriously repeating the narra- 
tive of all the strange occurrences of the resurrection and the 
repeated appearances of Jesus. Thomas had most probably been 
giving an account of his mental processes by which he had gone 
over from despondent unbelief to exultant faith in Jesus as God, 
and had told how he had worshipped Jesus, and how the Master 
had received the homage due only to God. 

Jesus appeared in their midst. No account has been preserved 
of his manner of approach. When they saw him the body of the 



sion. 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 705 

disciples worshipped him. But some hesitated. In the common 

version it is said some " doubted " (Matt, xxviii. 17). But this 

is not the meaning of the word. None doubted T 

b t Jesus reappears. 

that this was Jesus. They all knew him, and had 

all met at this time, on this mountain, at his appointment. But it 

is most reasonable to suppose that among five hundred persons 

there should be several who had the temperament of Thomas, 

and were slow to worship. The historian, who was present, does 

not say that all worshipped, but he does frankly state that " some 

hesitated." 

Jesus met these doubts as to his divinity with a vast claim. 
He approached the doubters and said, " All power is given to me 
in heaven and on earth." He claimed to be al- 
mighty. These words could mean nothing else 
to the listeners. They must believe that, or they 
could never undertake the great work he was about to place in 
their hands. This was the commission : " Go, make disciples of 
all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit : Teaching them to ob- 
serve all things, whatever I have commanded you: And lo, 
I am with you every day till the consummation of the present 
aeon." 

Of this commission several things are to be noticed. 

1. It was the last word of Jesus recorded by his biographers. 
It was the commitment of his cause into the hands of his 
friends. It is his last protest against church li- 

ness. There were the Seventy, who had had a ed word 
special work to do, and had done it. There were 
the Twelve, who were still to continue in that work of an itine- 
rant proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus. But 
neither to the Seventy nor to the Twelve does Jesus grant any 
corporate powers. What the Seventy had done, and what the 
Twelve had to do, all his disciples were authorized to do, wher- 
ever their sphere and whatever their condition in life. All these 
five hundred might make disciples and baptize them, and all 
these, when made disciples, might in their turn perform the same 
offices for others. No word or act of Jesus, before or after his 
resurrection, can be fairly employed to sustain the modern arti- 
ficial distinction between " clergymen " and " laymen." 

2. Jesus gives the name of God in the synonym of "The 

45 



706 THE KESUEEECTION OF JESUS 

Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit." He believed that there is one 
God. He called himself the Son. He claimed to be God in his 

oneness with " The Father," in his omnipotence, 
is concep o j n j^g omnipresence, and in his eternal existence. 

He allowed his disciples to present to him the 
worship proper to be rendered to Jehovah. His concept of 
God was of a triunity. This is quite manifest. The mode of the 
existence of this oneness and this threeness together he never dis- 
cusses. God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy 
Spirit : The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is 
God. But he does not say that there are three persons, or three 
several forms of the exhibition of one person. He makes no dog- 
matic statement. As this is not a theological treatise, but rather 
a psychological essay, we have nothing to do with theological sci- 
entific explanations. But the historical statement is that, in point 
of fact, in the mind of Jesus the concept of God was that of a 
triunity. 

As the Jews were "baptized unto Moses," and so incorporated 
with that system of religion which is represented under the He- 
brew theocracy, the kingliness of the One Jehovah, so now the 
disciples of Jesus are to be baptized unto " The Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit," and incorporated into that system of religion which 
is represented by the triple concept of God as being Father and 
Son and Spirit, the living lovingness of the One Jehovah. 

3. Jesus removed all restrictions to the labors of his disciples, 
such as are recorded in Matthew x. 5. His gospel is to be preached 

to all nations. He has so succeeded in this that 
All restrictions we are ims ^i e to appreciate, even by an effort of 
removed. . ' x x \ J . 

the intellect, what a stupendous undertaking it 

was. All other s}'stems are suited to nationalities. They there- 
fore intensified all the narrowness of race, and that narrowness 
helped to perpetuate them. None did so more than the Jewish 
church. To put Samaritans and Romans and Greeks and distant 
barbarians on the same footing of spiritual privilege as the elect 
Jewish race was an idea so wide that it had never before entered 
the Jewish mind. Jesus believed that his system was as well adapt- 
ed to one climate as another, and to one nation as another : to the 
polytheistical Gentiles as to the monotheistic Jews ; to the power- 
ful Romans as to the weak Gauls ; to the cultivated Greeks as to 
the rough savages in the forests of Germany. 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 707 

It was an idea wholly original with Jesus. He had no prece- 
dent. He had no human authority for it. He predicted that it 
should be done. If he had simply delivered a 
discourse, in which he had taught the desirable- ,. A universal re " 

ligion. 

ness of this universal religion, and that discourse 
had been preserved, it would have rendered his fame immortal, 
and have placed him far in advance of all the wisest and most 
profound of human thinkers. Coming from an unlettered me- 
chanic, raised in one of the meanest villages of the most narrow 
and bigoted people on earth, the announcement would have been 
a marvel of grandest thought. The more remarkable fact is, that 
each succeeding century has brought his w r ords nearer to a ful- 
filment, and that none since his death has contributed so much to 
their accomplishment as the present, a century full of hottest 
political excitements, of vastest enterprises, of most material pro- 
gress, and largest liberality of thought. 

4. His latest words were a claim and a prediction. The} r were 
a claim of perpetuity, of personal presence, and personal influence. 
He should exist. He should be present with each 
disciple in every part of the world, every day, c aim * 

until the present system of things shall meet the 
cataclysm which shall inaugurate another seon, another system of 
things. All our new science demonstrates that the Great Creator 
divides His biography into parts and into chapters. The whole 
universe, so far as we have been able to read it, is falling forward. 
Nothing in the past gives us much help towards ascertaining the 
probable length of the present seon; but everything we learn in- 
creases the probability that some vast change shall come. 

Everything that Jesus predicted has come to pass, except this, 

and this is coming to pass. The present age promises that when 

the last day of the system, of which thoughtful 

mortals form a part, shall arrive, there will be ^ emar a e 

. . fihnent. 

disciples of Jesns engaged in his work, according 

to this prediction. They are now more busy than ever. It is an 
important series of facts that the books which contain the original 
history of Jesus, the record of his acts and words, and the predic- 
tions which he made, constitute the first volume which was set in 
type and published at the invention of printing;* that at this 

* It was issued at Mentz, in Germany, I Revived, says of this book : " Though a 
in 1450. McClure, in his Translators I first attempt, it is beautifully printed on 



708 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 



time there are several presses engaged on each of the continents 
in printing nothing but that volume; that it is printed and 
circulated in more languages and dialects than any other book o v 
books considered by any criticism as sacred or profane;* that so 
soon as a savage tribe is discovered its language is reduced to a 
grammar, that there shall be translated into it the volume, the 
central figure of which is Jesus ; that his name occurs more fre- 
quently in song than that of any other man who ever lived, and 
that the eighteenth century after that in which he lived has pro- 
duced more books investigating his character and claims than all 
the preceding centuries. 



very fine paper, and with superior ink. 
At least eighteen copies of this famous 
edition are known to be in existence at 
the present time. Twenty-five years 
ago, one of them, printed on vellum, 
was sold for five hundred and four 
pounds sterling ! " 

* The whole number of languages and 
dialects into which the Holy Scriptures 
have been translated is two hundred and 
fifty-two. Of these, two hundred and 
five are versions prepared since the ori- 
gin of Bible Societies, at which time 
the Scriptures had been translated into 
only forty-seven different languages. 
Bagster, in his Bible of Every Land, 
gives specimens of the Scriptures in 
various languages and dialects, to the 
number of about three hundred, includ- 
ing those which have been printed in 
different native characters. 

It is supposed that within three years 
after the publication of the Great Bible, 
in 1539, no less than twenty-one thou- 
sand copies were printed. Between 
1524 and 1611, two hundred and sev- 
enty-eight editions of Bibles or Testa- 
ments in English were printed. In 1611, 
1612, and 1613, five editions of King 
James's version were published, besides 
separate editions of the New Testa- 
ment ; and we have some slight clue to 
the size of the editions in the fact, that 
one person in England has recently col- 



lated no less than seventy copies of the 
issues of 1611 ; yet, after all, this was 
the day of small things. 

Since the beginning of the present 
century, the British and Foreign Bible 
Society has issued over sixty-three mil- 
lions of Bibles and Testaments ; the 
American Bible Society has issued more 
than twenty-seven millions of volumes ; 
other Bible Societies, not far from 
twenty millions ; while private publish- 
ers in Great Britain, the United States, 
and elsewhere, have increased these is- 
sues by scores of millions besides. 

In speaking on this subject, Anderson, 
in his Annals of the English Bible, says : 
' ' The volumes of the Scriptures which 
have already been printed cannot be 
numbered. Hitherto we have num- 
bered the editions only ; but this is now 
impossible. No one can say exactly how 
many editions even of the English Bible 
have been published, much less inform 
us how many copies. 1 '' 

The volumes of Holy Writ circulated 
within the present century are greater 
in number than all that were in the 
world from Moses to Martin Luther, 
and are more than double the entire 
production of the press, from the print- 
ing of the first Bible in 1450 to the era 
of Bible Societies in 1804. (Se 
ual of the American Bible Society.) 



AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. 



709 



The Ascension. 



IY. 

There is but one other thing to record. They all returned to 
Jerusalem. On the fortieth day after his resurrection, Jesus led 
them out to the neighborhood of Bethany. There, 
on some part of the Mount of Olives, they saw him 
for the last time. He blessed them, and while in the act of pro- 
nouncing his final benediction, he was parted from them. He 
ascended in their sight. He passed into a cloud. The rapt 
disciples stood gazing up into that part of the heavens where they 
had last beheld their Lord. Suddenly two men in white apparel 
stood beside the silent group, and one said, " Ye men of Galilee, 
why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, 
which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like man- 
ner as you have seen him taken into heaven." 

The disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They 
believed that Jesus, who had departed, was still present, and their 
sorrow was gone ; and they who, forty days before, were in the 
darkness of despair, now continually praised God, and waited for 
the further direction of Jesus. He had become to them the glory 
of heaven and of earth. 




MHDAX, FOUND AT UBFA, STRIA. 



lllllllllllllllllllll 

iBl II 







710 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 



Who is this Jesus % 

I have told his story as simply and as conscientiously as possi- 
ble, and have honestly endeavored to apprehend and to repre- 
sent the consciousness of Jesus at each moment of his career. 
The work of the historian is completed. Each reader has now 
the responsibility of saying who he is. All agree that he was 
man. The finest intellects of eighteen centuries have believed 
that he was the greatest and best man that ever lived. All who 
have so believed have become better men therefor. We have 
seen that he never performed an act or spoke a word which would 
have been unbecoming in the Creator of the Universe, if the 
Creator should ever clothe Himself with human flesh. Millions 
of men — kings, and poets, and historians, and philosophers, and 
busy merchants, and rude mechanics, and purest women, and 
simple children — have believed that he is God. And all who have 
devoutly believed this, and lived by this as a truth, have become 
exemplary for all that is beautiful in holiness. 

What is he who can so live and so die as to produce such lticei 
lectual and moral results % 



Header, yoa must answer 



APPENDICES. 



Chronology of the Birth of Jesus. — Pp. 26-37. 

By an inadvertence which I seek to correct in this Appendix, a note 
was omitted in the proper place, giving full credit for my obligation tc 
A New Harmony and Exposition of the Gospels, by James Strong, 
LL.D. (published by Carlton & Lanahan, New York), for much aid 
which I received from that valuable volume in my discussion of the date 
of the birth of Jesus. 

Capernaum. — P. 167. 

It should have been stated in the text that the proper name " Na- 
hum " means " consolation." The reader would naturally infer that if 
it had any signification it was something else than " consolation." The 
place may have been named for Nahum, or it may not : if not, then its 
name simply signified " Village of Consolation." T did not detect this 
inadvertence until after the page had been stereotyped. 

Addition to Note on P. 189. 

Perhaps the ocurouj, " them," in Luke v. 17, may refer to o^Xoi qroXXoi, 
" great multitudes," in verse 15. But what I have written, both in the 
text and in the note, is unnecessary if the reading of the Sinaitic Codex 
be adopted. That omits the avrovs, and reads " the power of the Lord 
wrought in him so that he healed." With the omission of the word 
" them " at the end of the sentence the difficulty disappears. 

Slaves at Jubilee. — P. 203. 

The statement in the second paragraph, in regard to the freeing of 
slaves at the Jubilee, is to be understood with the limitation stated in 
Leviticus xxv., from which it would appear that slaves which were " of 
the heathen round about" them, " of the children of the strangers that 



712 APPENDICES. 

sojourned among" them, did not enjoy this provision of the jubilee. 
The statement in the text is correct, but this is added for accuracy. 

Mary of Magdala. — Pp. 321-323. 

That part of this book which treats of Mary of Magdala was in the 
hands of the printer before I read Dr. Hanna's view of the case, as he 
gives it in the Forty Days, etc., chap. ii. I am gratified to have the 
support of this eloquent preacher so far as that this Mary is not to 
be confounded with the " sinner " who anointed Jesus, — and that she 
was not a woman of base character or low condition, — and that the 
having had seven devils is no proof that she was of depraved and 
dissolute habits. He well says : " Satanic possession carried then no 
more evidence along with it of previous immorality than insanity 
would do now among ourselves." 

A Translation Explained. — P. 325. 

In the last paragraph is this translation of the words of Jesus as re- 
ported by Matthew : " And every city or house divided against itself 
shall not stand." These words are a literal but not a logical trans- 
lation of the original, because, when the original is rendered into our 
language the English words imply that some such city or house may 
stand. If, however, the word " not " be considered as attached to the 
predicate and not to the copula, this translation will be a logical as 
well as a literal rendering. It then means, " Every such city shall 
fall." [See Whately's Elements of Logic, book ii., chap, ii., § 4.] 
This explanation applies as well to the translation on p. 143, " that every 
one who trusts in him may not perish," etc. 

Discipline.— Pp. 353, 354. 

This paragraph may be suggested by over-caution, but it may be 
that my explication of the parable of the Tares may be understood by 
some readers to be a protest against all church discipline. I would not 
be so understood. I do not believe that Jesus taught that there was 
to be no discipline in the church. His lesson is against that excessive 
rigor which is destructive and not disciplinary, and a caution against 
undue confidence in our power of discrimination. One sentence on page 
353 I should rewrite : " It is better by mistake to permit an evil man 
to reside in a community, a church, a society, a town, than by mistake 
fco destroy a good man." 



APPENDICES. 713 

The Woman taken in Adultery. — P. 456. 

The story of the woman taken in adultery is found only in John's 
Gospel. The critical editors of the Greek Testament mark this whole 
passage in the eighth chapter as doubtful or spurious. It does not ap- 
pear in the Sinaitic Codex. In the first writing of this book I omitted 
this narrative. Upon a review of the authorities my opinion agrees 
with that expressed by Dr. Schaff: "The prevailing critical evidence, 
though mostly negative, is against the passage, .the moral evidence for 
it. ; in other words, it seems to be no original part of John's written Gos- 
pel, but the record of an actual event which probably happened about 
the time indicated by its position in the eighth chapter. The story could 
not have been invented, the less so as it runs contrary to the ascetic and 
legalistic tendency of the ancient church, which could not appreciate it." 
Those who desire to see the authorities on both sides may consult 
Lange's Commentary on the chapter, with Dr. Schaif's valuable addi- 
tions in his translation. It is so consistent with the character of Jesus 
that I think we may accept it as a real event in his life, inserted by 
some unknown author in the narrative given by John. 

Bethany=Bethabara. — P. 482. 

According to the received text, Bethabara is the name of the place 
where John was baptizing, apparently at the time when Jesus came to 
him for baptism. (See John i.) But the oldest manuscripts have 
" Bethany," a reading which Origen states was found in most of the 
copies of his day. 

The Translation of Matthew xix. 10. — P. 519. 

I found it difficult to render the original of the passage which in our 
common version is translated, " If the case of a man be so with his 
wife." I am not yet satisfied with this translation, and yet am not pre- 
pared to suggest a better. The word translated "case" means cause, 
but specially the cause of something bad. It is a sinister word. My 
translation appears very awkward, now that I see it in print. The 
disciples seemed to mean that if their Master's view of the marriage 
relation was correct, then the relation of a married man to his wife 
was injurious to him, and it were better one should not marry. 

Physical Cause of the Death of Jesus. — P. 679. 

Attention has been called to Dr. Stroud's book on the Physical Cause 
of the death of Jesus. It has been republished in this country since 
this portion of the book was written. 




714 APPENDICES. 

After writing my paragraph on the subject, I saw Dr. Hanna* 
volume on The Last Day of the Passion of our Lord. In the 
Appendix he has a letter from Dr. Begbie, late President of the Royal 
College of Physicians in Edinburgh, in which that learned gentleman 
accepts Dr. Stroud's theory. He calls attention to the fact that rup- 
ture of the heart is comparatively a rare affection, and, so far as he 
knows, limited to persons advanced in life or laboring under some 
degeneration of the structure of the organ. Jesus, however, was young 
and healthy, so far as we can discover. How great must have been 
his anguish to produce this rupture ! 

Dr. Hanna also quotes a letter from Dr. Simpson, Professor in the 
University of Edinburgh, who also accepts Dr. Stroud's theory. He 
asserts that so far as we can now understand the physical condition 
of Jesus, such a sudden termination of his sufferings in death could 
be produced only by fatal fainting or by a rupture of the walls of 
the heart or of larger blood-vessels issuing from it. But the symp- 
toms, such as the loud cry, show that it was not mortal syncope. He 
says : " On the other hand, these symptoms were such as have been seen 
in cases of rupture of the walls of the heart. Thus, in the latest book 
published in the English language on Diseases of the Heart, the eminent 
author, Dr. Walshe, Professor of Medicine in University College, Lon- 
don, when treating of the symptoms indicating death by rupture of the 
heart, observes : " The hand is suddenly carried to the front of the 
chest, a piercing shriek uttered," etc., etc. The rapidity of the resulting 
death is regulated by the size and shape of the ruptured opening. But 
usually death very speedily ensues in consequence of the blood escaping 
from the interior of the heart into the cavity of the large surrounding 
heart, sac, or pericardium ; which sac has, in cases of rupture of the 
heart, been found on dissection to contain sometimes two, three, four, 
or more pounds of blood accumulated within it, and separated into red 
clot and limpid serum, or ' blood and water,' as is seen in blood when 
collected out of the body in a cup or basin in the operation of common 
blood-letting." 

Dr. Josiah C. Nott of this city, a gentleman of well-known high scien- 
tific attainments, has favored me with a copy of his post-mortem examina- 
tion of the Pev. Mr. Maffitt, made with the assistance of Dr. E. P. Gaines, 
in Mobile, in 1850. Mr. Maffitt was known all over the United States 
as a man of no ordinary pulpit ability. He was what is called a "re- 
vivalist," and spent the last years of his life in great excitement. He 
got into trouble, was arraigned before the courts of his church in New 
York, and subsequently went South, where he was preaching with great 
success, and apparently in high health, when evil reports pursued him. 



APPENDICES. 715 

and damaging articles from the New York papers were republished in Mo- 
bile. Parties were arrayed for and against him. He was greatly excited. 
He was taken suddenly ill, about eight o'clock p.m., on the 27th of June, 
and died in seven hours When the physician arrived he found him " in 
great pain, which he referred to the inferior sternal region." He had 
had pain in the heart on several previous occasions. " Auscultation de- 
tected no abnormal sound, no palpitation, but the heart beat regularly 
and slowly." " He was perfectly cold all over, and bathed in cold sweat." 
After anodynes and carminatives had been administered, he said, 
" Doctor, I feel better now, everywhere else, but that pain still remains. 
It is a persistent and abiding pain, that seems to press through me against 
my spine." "All this time his pulse was regular, full, strong, but 
rather slow; his strength was good, for he got out of bed several 
times without help." At one o'clock morphine and calomel were adminis- 
tered. At two o'clock the pain had left his breast and gone to his heart, 
but still retained its severity. There was no palpitation. He com- 
plained of being weaker, and his pulse, although regular, seemed slower 
and weaker. In fifteen minutes his heart had stopped beating. The 
post-mortem showed his lungs sound throughout: "pericardium fully 
distended with fluid, and when opened was found to contain blood and 
serum." Dr. Nott says : " This being carefully removed by a sponge, 
I introduced my hand into the sac beneath the heart, and on grasping 
this organ the contained blood was seen to spirt from a small perforation 
in the anterior wall of the left ventricle, disclosing at once the imme- 
diate cause of his death." Dr. Nott pronounced the death " from fatty 
degeneration, ulceration, and rupture of the hearty'' confirming Dr. 
Begbie's general view of such cases in his letter to Dr. Hanna. If Mr. 
Maffitt's heart had not been diseased, he would probably have survived 
his grief. Jesus was younger by a quarter of a century, and was appa- 
rently sound. Dr. Nott believed that Mr. Mafntt had a malady which 
" marches steadily onward," but adds that " it is highly probable that its 
termination was hastened hy moral causes." I cite it as a well-authen- 
ticated case, the most modern known to me, of rupture of the heart. 



IIN" D E IX 



OF MATTER NOT EASILY FOUND IN THE TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Ab-Beth-Din, the, 70. 

Abercrombie, Dr., quoted, 682. 

Abia, course of, 15. 

Abbot, Rupert, quoted, 119. 

Aceldama, Potter's Field, 663. 

Acta Philippi, 115. 

Acta Sanctorum, quoted, 74. 

Adonis, grove of, 37. 

^Enon, 145. 

^Eon, 21, 328, 476. 

yEra, Vulgar, 24. 

iEschylus, quoted, 119. 

Alford, Dean, quoted, 31, 34, 47, 94, 
114, 130, 140, 181, 184, 195, 225, 289, 
295, 303, 335, 406, 630. 

Alexander, J. A., quoted, 165, 302, 330, 
345. 

Ambivius, procurator, 63. 

Ambrose, quoted, 293. 

Amen, 117. 

"Amicus Caasaris," 659. 

Anderson's "Annals of English Bible," 
quoted, 708. 

Andrew, the Apostle, 114, 221. 

Andrews, S. J. , quoted, 541, 602, 613. 

Angaros, Persian, 276. 

Angel of Jehovah, 109. 

Angels, appear to shepherds, 40 ; minis- 
ter to Jesus, 106 ; Scriptural repre- 
sentations of, 106-111. 

Anna, the prophetess, 42. 

Annas, the high-priest, 67, 506, 636. 

Anriius Rufus, procurator, 63. 

Annunciation, of John's birth, 15; of 
birth of Jesus, 20. 

Anthony, Mark, 29, 358. 

Antigonus, 29. 

Antiochus Epiphanes, 129, 551. 

Antisthenes, quoted, 192. 

Antonia, tower of, 602, 652, 656. 

Apostolic Constitutions, 293. 

Aquinas, Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, 
354. 

Archelaus, his troubles, 58 ; in Rome, 
59 ; as Ethnarch, 60 ; his income, 60 ; 
marries Glaphyra, 60 ; dies in Vienne, 
61 ; suggests a parable, 540. 



Archisynagogus, 163. 

Aretas, father-in-law to Herod Antipas. 

66. 
Asnapper, colonizes Samaria, 150. 
Assarion, a coin, 380. 
Astronomical calculations, 30. 
Augustine, quoted, 31, 34, 47, 205, 

282, 288, 329, 343, 346, 347, 534. 
Ava, land of, 150. 



B. 



Babylon, colonists from, to Samaria, 
150. 

Badius, Conrad, 420. 

Bahr, quoted, 150. 

Bagster's "Bible in Every Land," quot- 
ed, 708. 

Baptism, John's, 80 ; of Jesus, 84-89. 

Barabbas, 654 ; preferred to Jesus, 657. 

Barachias, 588. 

Bartholomew, the Apostle, 119, 226. 

Bartimseus, 533. 

Bath-Kol, the, 551. 

Beelzebul, 325, 444. 

Benedictus, the, 21. 

Bengel, quoted, 93, 140, 142, 225, 285, 
289, 534. 

Bernard, quoted, 119. 

Bertholdt, quoted, 159. 

Bethabara, 482. 

Bethany, 465, 495, 498. 

Bethany, east, 145, 495. 

Bethesda, 198. 

Bethlehem, 36 ; children slain, 32. 

Bethsaida, denounced, 316, 387. 

Bethsaida-Julias, 413. 

Bethphage, 543. 

Beza, quoted, 142. 

Bibliotheca Sacra, quoted, 111, 167. 

Biehle's Economic Calendar, 27. 

Bloody sweat, cases of, 682. 

Boanerges, 223, 532. 

Bonar, quoted, 167. 

Bordeaux Pilgrim, 37. 

Bucher, quoted, 534. 

Burials among the Jews, 498. 

Byssus, 492. 



INDEX. 



717 



Cassar, Augustus, death of, 11 ; decree 
for taxing, 18. 

Cassar, Tiberius, 10. 

Csesarea Philippi, 415, 431. 

Caiaphas, high-priest, 57, 67, 637, 643. 

Caligula, Emperor, favors Herod Agrip- 
pa, 67. 

Calvary, true site of, 665. 

Camel's hair, 74. 

Cana of Galilee, 120. 

Canatha, 407. 

Capernaum, 167; denounced, 316. 

Caravanserai, 40. 

Cassiodorus, quoted, 26. 

Cellarius, quoted, 407. 

Celsus, quoted, 363. 

Census, ordered by Augustus, 30 ; Ro- 
man and Jewish methods, 32. 

Chardin, quoted, 568. 

Chazzan, The, 163. 

Chief priests, 69. 

Chorazin, denounced, 84. 

Christmas, Latin, 23 ; Creek, 26. 

Chronology of birth of Jesus, 23. 

" Church," 420. 440. 

Chrysostom, quoted, 235, 346, 578. 

Chuza, 161. 

Cicero, quoted, 307, 362. 

Clement of Alexandria, quoted, 115, 
249, 362. 

Cleopas, 50 ; name of an Emmaus disci- 
ple, 695. 

Cleopatra and her pearls, 358. 

Clericus, quoted, 534. 

Coins, 126. 

" Congregation," 420, 440. 

Constantine, Emperor, 37. 

Consulships, 25. 

Coponius, procurator. 62, 63. 

Corban; The, 65, 400! 

Croesus, 129. 

Criminal laws of the Jews, 632. 

Crosby, Dr., quoted, 199, 534, 613. 

Cross, form and construction of, 664. 

Cuthah, colonizing Samaria, 150. 

Cyprian, quoted, 93. 

Cyrenius (Quirinus), 31, 33, 34, 62. 

Cyril, of Alexandria, quoted, 181. 

Cyril, of Jerusalem, quoted, 428. 



D. 



Da Costa, quoted, 534. 

Dalmanutha, 410. 

Damascus, 407. 

Dante, quoted, 354. 

Darius, Hystapes, 151. 

Darius, Nothus, 151. 

Death from joy, cases of, 680, 681. 



Decapolis, 182, 406. 

Demetrius, 276. 

Denarius, 464. 

De Pressense, quoted, 36. 

De Quincey's theory of Judas, 605, 608 

609. 
De Sacy, quoted, 151. 
Devil, The, popular superstitions, 376. 
De Wette, quoted, 93, 469. 
Diabolus, 460. 
Dickinson's Version, 300. 
Didrachm, 436. 
Didymus (Thomas), 227. 
Dio Cassius, quoted, 25, 31. 
Dion, city of Decapolis, 407. 
Dionysius, Exiguus, 24. 
Doctor of Divinity, 583. 
Doddridge, quoted, 534. 
Dods, Rev. Morris, quoted, 469. 
Domitian, Emperor, 18. 
Dora, 415. 

Dove, at baptism of Jesus, 88. 
Drachma, coin, 487. 
Dupin, M. , on trial of Jesus, 631-635. 
Dwight, Dr., quoted, 107. 



E. 



East, The, 43. 

Ebal, Mount, 150. 

Ebrard, quoted, 534. 

Edinburgh Review, quoted, 85. 

Egypt, Jesus in, 47. 

Eichhorn, quoted, 93. 

El-Azariyeh, 505. 

Elders, 69. 

Eleazer, high-priest, 63. 

Eliezer, of Lydda, 164. 

Elijah, 73, 416 ; with Jesus, 415, 428, 

430, 675. 
Elizabeth, 15, 16, 20, 21. 
Ellicott, Bishop, quoted, 82, 386, 534, 571. 
EUiotson, Dr., quoted, 682. 
El-Mejdel, 410. 

Emmaus, 693; the walk thither, 693-695. 
"Ephphatha," 408. 
Ephratah, 36. 
Ephrem, 507. 
Erasmus, quoted, 335. 
Esarhaddon, 150. 
Essenes, sketch of, 72. 
Eunuchs, 521. 

Euripides, his " Phgsdra and Medaea," 470. 
Eusebius, quoted, 39, 114, 115, 146, 230, 

571. 
Euthymius, quoted, 142. 
Excommunication, 475. 



F. 



Fairbairn, quoted, 236. 



718 



INDEX. 



Parmer, quoted, 
Fasti, The, 25. 



Figs, 555. 
Fountain of the Virgin, 199. 
Friedlieb, quoted, 534. 
Furness, quoted, 85. 



G. 



Gabriel, and Zacharias, 15, and Mary, 

21. 
Gadara, 365, 407. 
Gaius, Institutes of, 31. 
Galilee, " of the Gentiles," 169 ; " no 

prophet arises out of," 456. 
Gaulonitis, 428. 
Gehenna, 585. 
Gemara, The, 400, 518. 
Gemini, consulship of the, 25. 
Genealogical tables of Matthew and 

Luke, 17. 
Gennesaret, Plain of, 168. 
Gerasa, 407. 

Gerizim, Mount, 150, 446. 
Gethsemane, 628, 629, 681. 
Glaphyra, wife of Archelaus, 60. 
Golgotha, Calvary, 665. 
"Gospel according to the Hebrews," 

214. 
Graves, whitened, 586. 
Gresswell, quoted, 225, 235, 243, 386, 

534, 541, 613, 621. 
Grotius, quoted, 137, 202, 476, 534. 
Grotto of Jeremiah, 666. 
Gustave Dore, 423. 



Hackett, quoted, 556. 

Hades, 418. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 37. 

Hallel, the Great, 545, 624. 

Hamann, quoted, 53. 

Hamath, 150. 

Hammond, quoted, 475, 555. 

Heart, description of the, 680. 

Hebron, 16. 

Hegesippus, 229. 

Heinsius, quoted, 555. 

Helena, Empress, 39, 666. 

Heliopolis, 47, 48. 

Hengstenberg, quoted, 109, 111, 578. 

Hermon, 406, 427. 

Herod, the Great, 15 ; interview with 
wise men. 29 ; date of death, 28 ; 
becomes king, 29 ; kills the Bethle- 
hem babes, 32, 46 ; connection with 
the census, 33 ; Augustus's opinion 
of him, 48 ; his outrages, 48, 56 ; 
his family, 57; his will, 58; his 



funeral, 58; completes the Temple, 
131. 

Herod, Antipas, Tetrarch, 65 ; seducea 
Herodias, 66 ; quarrels with Pilate, 
66 ; his fall and death, 67 ; his char- 
acter, 67 ; and John Baptist, 148 ; 
kills John Baptist, 386 ; seeks Jesus, 
483 ; at trial of Jesus, 650 ; quarrel 
with Pilate healed, 651. 

Herod, Agrippa I. , 57. 

Herod, Philip I., husband of Herodias, 
55. 

Herodias, forsakes Philip for Antipas, 
66 ; whom she instigates to his ruin, 
66 ; adheres to him, 67, 148 ; causes 
death of John Baptist, 385. 

Herodians, sketch of, 72, 216, 568. 

Herodotus, quoted, 195, 276, 568. 

Herzog, quoted, 68. 

High-priest, 507. 

High-priesthood, 67, 506, 561. 

Hill of Evil Counsel, 663. 

HiUel, 214, 517. 

Hippolytus, of Thebes, 17. 

Hippos, of Decapolis, 409. 

Homer, quoted, 195, 262. 

Horace,' quoted, 567. 

Horns of Hattin, 241. 

Howe, Fisher, quoted, 666. 

Hubner, quoted, 93, 331. 

Hyrcanus, 551. 



Ideler's calculation, 30. 

Ingraham's "Prince of the House of 

David," quoted, 604. 
Ignatius, Martyr, 439. 



J. 



Jacob's Bridge, 191. 

Jacob's well, 152. 

Jahn, quoted, 64, 498. 

Jarvis, quoted, 534. 

James I., Apostle, 170, 222, 590, 630. 

James II. , Apostle, 228. 

Jennings, quoted, 448, 449. 

Jericho, 465. 

Jerome, quoted, 37, 74, 114, 146, 249 
289, 320. 

Jerusalem, date of destruction, 26. 

Joazer, High-Priest, 56. 

Job, 470. 

John, Apostle, 114, 170, 223, 439, 590 ; 
his allegation against Judas, 607, 
619 ; in Gethsemane, 630, 671 ; at 
the cross, 673, 678 ; at the sepulchre, 
689, 701. 

John, the Baptist, birth announced, 17* 



INDEX. 



no 



his birth and circumcision, 21 ; early 
life, 22 ; ministry, 73 ; baptizes Jesus, 
84-89 ; discoverer of the Messiah, 90 ; 
in prison, 311 ; message to Jesus, 
312 ; Jesus's estimate of him, 314 ; 
his execution, 385. 

Joppa, 415. 

Joseph, betrothed to Mary, 16 ; his 
dream, 23 ; in Bethlehem, 39 ; in 
the Temple, 42 ; takes Mary and 
Jesus to Egypt, 47 ; settles in Naza- 
reth, 49 : with Jesus at a passover, 
51. 

Joseph, of Arimathea, 684. 

Josephus, quoted, 24, 29, 33, 51, 58, 60, 
61, 62, 65, 68, 69, 71, 103, 120, 126, 
129, 130, 148, 151, 168, 174, 183, 
221, 231, 276, 326, 332, 342, 347, 407, 
449, 465, 506, 512, 518, 551, 561, 615, 
629, 643. 

Josephus Caiaphas, 506. 

Judas, of Galilee, heads a revolt, 62. 

Judas I., Apostle, 230, 624. 

Judas II. (Iscariot), Apostle, 231, 398, 
601 ; his case studied, 603, 619 ; in 
high-priest's palace, 639; the last of 
him, 660. 

Julian, Emperor, 249. 

Justin, Martyr, 37, 578. 

Juttah, 16. 

Juvenal, quoted, 388. 



Kedron, the creek, 625, 628. 

Keneth, of Decapolis, 407. 

Kepler, his calculations, 30, 46. 

Keraia, The, 265. 

Bang James, orders "church" inserted 

in the translation, 420. 
Kitto, quoted, 534. 
Knapp, quoted, 142. 
Krabbe, quoted, 93. 
Krafft, quoted, 534. 
Kunol, quoted, 68, 335. 



L. 



Lachmann, quoted, 406. 

Lauge, quoted, 142, 237, 289, 331 , 849, 

362, 452, 469, 525, 534, 561. 
Larduer, quoted, 34, 48. 
Lawyer, vo/xlkos, 575. 
Lazariyeh, 505. 
Lebanon, 406. 
Lebbeus, 230. 
Legis Actiones, 31. 
Leprosy, the, 183-186. 
Lepton, coin, 589. 
Lex, quoted, 534. 



Lichtenstein, quoted, 48, 534. 
Lightfoot, quoted, 68, 285, 335, 371 

417, 448, 472, 534, 561, 571, 586, 666 
Livy, quoted, 473. 
Locke, quoted, 176. 
Locusts, 74. 

Liicke, quoted, 142, 469. 
Luthardt, quoted, 541. 
Luther, quoted, 142, 405. 



M. 



Maccabees, the, 182, 463. 

McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia, 

quoted, 108, 407. 
McClure, quoted, 707. 
Machserus, Castle of, 148, 311. 
McKnight, quoted, 469, 534. 
MacWhorter, quoted, 111. 
Magadan, 410. 
Magdala, 320, 410. 
Magi, the, and Herod, 43-46. 
Magnificat, The, 22. 
Magor-missabib, 261. 
Maimonides, quoted, 194, 571, 624. 
Malchus, high-priest's servant, 640. 
Maldonatus, Spanish Jesuit, 354. 
Mammon, 490. 
Manasseh, 150, 151, 261. 
Manual, Bible Society, quoted, 708. 
Mariamne, 57, 60. 
Mark, his style, 520. 
Mary, the mother of Jesus, betrothal. 
16 ; genealogy, 17 ; in Nazareth, 20 ; 
the Annunciation, 19 ; visits Eliza- 
beth, 20 ; pronounces the Magnificat, 
20 ; returns to Nazareth, 21 ; hei 
several sons, 39 ; in Bethlehem, 40 ; 
in the Temple, 41 ; her relations 
with Jesus, 672 ; at the cross, 672, 
678. 
Mary Magdalene, 321, 667, 671, 685, 

687, 688, 690. 
Mary, wife of Cleopas, 671. 
Massillon, quoted, 311. 
Matthew (Levi), Apostle, 191, 226. 
Maundrell, quoted, 152. 
Menahem, heads a revolt, 63. 
Messiah, The, to be a leper, 186. 
Metariyeh, 47. 

Metempsychosis, among the Jews, 472. 
Meyer, quoted, 93, 142, 279, 317, 406, 

442, 469, 586, 675. 
Michaelis, quoted, 248, 578. 
Midrash, The, 551. 
Milman, Dean, quoted, 63, 81, 159, 182, 

468, 469. 
Milton, quoted, 108. 
Mina, its value, 540. 
Mishna, The, 27 ; quoted, 68, 69, 400. 
Money, coins, 126. 



720 



INDEX. 



Moreh, an epithet of contempt, 
Morrison, quoted, 534. 
Moriah, Mount, 454. 
Moses, with Jesus, 427. 
Myth theory, The, 94. 



N. 



Nabliis, 149. 

Nain, 309. 

Nasi, of the synagogue, 70. 

Nathanael, 115, 226. 

Nazareth, 19 ; Jesus settles there, 49 ; 
Renan's description of it, 50, 54 ; Je- 
sus revisits, 162. 

Neander, quoted, 31, 93, 124, 534, 610. 

Neapolis, 149. 

Nehemiah, 151. 

Nemesis, 470. 

Newcome, quoted, 534. 

Nicodemus, his interview with Jesus, 
133; in the Sanhedrim, 563; secret 
disciple, 684. 

Nicophanes, quoted, 114. 

Nineveh, 332. 

Nunc Dimittis, The, 42. 



O. 



Olearius, quoted, 248. 

Olshausen, quoted, 93, 133, 343, 347, 

469, 500, 621. 
Oosterzee, quoted, 534. 
Origen, quoted, 37, 93. 
Osiander, quoted, 534. 
Ovid, quoted, 192, 262. 
Owen, quoted, 534. 



Palingenesia, The, 527. 

Palm- Sunday, 546. 

Paranymph, 147. 

Paschal Chronicle, 26. 

Pashur, 261. 

Passover, crowds at, 516 ; Jesus's last, 

616 ; Great Sabbath of, 677. 
Paulus, quoted, 93. 
Peccability of Jesus, 97. 
Pella, of Decapolis, 407 ; Christians find 

refuge, 596. 
Perea, 361, 482. 
Peter (Simon), 114, 170, 181, 219, 398, 

402, 405, 417, 436, 527, 590, 593, 617, 

619, 620, 630, 638, 639, 671, 688, 689, 

696, 701-703. 
Pfeninger, quoted, 167. 
Pharisees, sketch of, 71. 
Phidias, his statue of Nemesis, 470. 



Philadelphia, of Decapolis, 407. 
Philip, the Apostle, 115, 225, 362, 388, 

549, 623. 
Philip, the Tetrarch, 415. 
Philo, quoted, 64, 173. 
Phoenicia, 402. 
Phylactery, 463. 
Pilate, Pontius, procurator, 63 ; ontragei 

the Jews, 64, 342 ; at trial of Jesus, 

644 ; his wife's dream, 655. 
Pilkington, quoted, 534. 
Plato, quoted, 173, 202. 
Plutarch, quoted, 173. 
Polybius, quoted, 129, 365. 
Pompey, 129. 

Porter's Hand-Book, quoted, 666. 
Potter's Field, 603. 
Priests, courses of, 15, 29. 
Procurators, 62. 
Pseudo-Alexander, 61. 
Publicans, portitores, 227. 



Q. 



Quadrans, coin, 589. 

Quarantania, Mount of Temptation, 92. 

Queen of the South, 332. 

Quirinius (Cyrenius), 16. 



R. 



Rab, Rabbi, Rabboni, 113, 583. 
Rabboth-Ammon, of Decapolis, 407. 
Raka, a term of reproach, 208. 
Raphana, of Decapolis, 407. 
Renan, quoted, 20, 40 ; his description 

of Nazareth, 50, 55. 
Robinson, quoted, 120, 125, 167, 198, 

200, 241, 317, 367, 507, 534, 541. 
Rosenmuller, quoted. 344. 
Routh, quoted, 230. 



S. 



Sabinus, procurator, provokes a revolt, 
59. 

Sadducees, sketch of, 71. 

Sagan, of the Synagogue, 68. 

Salim, 145. 

Salome, 531, 671. 

Salvador, Dr., on "the Trial of Jesus," 
631. 

Samaritans, their origin, 150 ; defile the 
Temple, 151. 

Sanballat, 151. 

Sanhedrim, its origin, 68 ; its constitu- 
tion, size, President, place of meeting, 
and jurisdiction, 69, 453, 691. 

Satan = the Devil, 93, 98 ; Jewish ideas 



INDEX. 



721 



of, 100 ; Manichaean idea of, 100 ; 
idea in Job, 101 ; in David, 101 ; in 
Zechariah, 101 ; Jesus's idea, 102 ; 

178 ; 424. 
Saton, a Greek measure, 347. 
Schaff , Dr. , quoted, 284, 522. 
Schleiermacher, quoted, 42, 93, 335. 
Schoettgen, quoted, 151, 586. 
Scythopolis, now Beisan, 146, 407. 
Selden, quoted, 70, 558. 
Seneca, quoted, 279. 
Sepharvaim, colonizes Samaria, 150. 
Sepp, quoted, 49. 

Shalmanezer, carries Israelites into cap- 
tivity, 150. 
Shammai, head of a Jewish school, 214. 
Shaw, quoted, 74. 
Shechem, capital of Samaria, 149. 
Shekel, value of, 60. 
Sheliach, officer of the synagogue, 163. 
Shepherds, see angels, 39 ; village of, 40. 
k> Shoe's hatchet," 68. 
Sicarii, 63. 

Sidon, denounced, 316 ; visited, 402, 405. 
Siloam, 454, 472. 

Simeon, at the circumcision of Jesus, 41. 
Simla, high-priest's garment, 643. 
Simon I., Apostle, see "Peter." 
Simon II., Apostle, 231. 
Simon of Cyrene, 663. 
Simon, Zelotes, 231. 
Smith, Sir J. E., quoted, 298. 
Smith, Dr. Wm., " Dictionary of the 

Bible," quoted, 29, 71, 74, 151, 163, 

219, 222, 613. 
Smith, Dr. Wm., " N. T. History," 

quoted, 57, 103. 
" Son of David," 18, 119, 403. 
" Son of God," 118. 
"Son of the Law-," 51. 
" Son of Man," first use, 117; 361; 599. 
Sophocles, his "CEdipus," 470. 
Spartian, his " Life of Hadrian," 31. 
Stanley, quoted, 74, 166, 168, 242, 320. 
Stater, coin for Temple-tax, 437. 
Stier, quoted, 53, 335, 347, 383, 469, 

518, 534. 
Story, W. W. , his theory of Judas, 605. 
Strabo, quoted, 74. 
Strong, his "Harmony," quoted, 165, 

265. 332. 541. 
Stroud, Dr. Wm., quoted, 679. 
Sue, his " Wandering Jew," 99. 
Suetonius, quoted, 25, 31, 45. 
Sycamore tree, 537. 
Sychar =r Shechem, 152. 
Synagogue, full account of, 162-164. 



T. 

Tabor, Mount, 428, 704. 



Tacitus, quoted, 31; "breviarum of 

Augustus," 32 ; prevailing expectation 

of the Coming One, 45 ; speaks of 

Jesus, 65, 186, 473. 
Talent, value of, 442. 
Talmud, quoted, 55, 80, 192, 331, 400 

666. 
Targuin, The, 551. 
Taxing, The, under Cyrenius, 31 . 
Taylor, Jeremy, quoted, 475, 664. 
Tell Hum, ruins of, 168. 
Temple, The, 128; tax, 126, 436; 

tabernge, 557 ; veil rent, 676. 
Temptation of Jesus, 91. 
Tephilla = Phylactery, 582. 
Tertullian, quoted, 578. 
Thaddeus, 230. 
Theodoret, quoted, 114. 
Theodorus of Mopsuestia, quoted, 93 

347. 
Theophylact, quoted, 343. 
Tholuck, quoted, 141, 152, 244, 269 

453, 469. 
Thomas, Apostle, 227, 362, 497, 699. 
Thomson, Abp., quoted, 33. 
Thomson, his " Land and Book," quot 

ed, 92, 146, 167, 184, 245, 298, 346, 

360, 387, 390, 537, 629. 
Tiberius, Emperor, 17, 24, 26, 66. 
Tischendorf, quoted, 386, 406, 534. 
Townsend, quoted, 49. 
Tragelles, quoted, 406. 
Trajan, Emperor, 224. 
Trench, Abp., quoted, 124, 151, 184, 185 

S53, 355, 469, 473, 475, 534, 567 

597. 
Trent, Council of, its Catechism, 287. 
Tristam, quoted, 366. 
Tsitsith, The, 583. 
"Twelve, The," 235. 
Tyre, 402, 405. 



U. 



Upham, Dr. F. W., his "The Wis« 

Men," 46. 
Urim and Thummim, The, 507. 



V. 



Valerius Gratus, procurator, 68, 506. 
Van de Velde, quoted, 140. 
Varus, Prefect of Syria, 60. 
Vespasian, Emperor, 12, 149. 
Victorius, quoted, 26. 
Vitellius, 66. 

Voice, at baptism of Jesus, 77. 
Voltaire, on number slain at Bethl©* 

hem, 47. 
Von der Hardt, quoted, 262. 



722 



INDEX. 



Von Gerlach, quoted, 540. 
Vorstius, quoted, 69. 
Vulgar ^Era, The, 26. 



W. 



Ward, " View of the Hindoos," 597. 

Weisse, quoted, 93. 

Wesley, quoted, 167. 

Wetstein, quoted, 248, 473, 578, 586. 

Wiclif s translation, 489. 

Wieseler, quoted, 29, 31, 68, 386, 534, 

561 
Williams, "Holy City," quoted, 602. 
Wilson, "Lands of the Bible," quoted, 

167. 
Winer, quoted, 342, 518, 561. 
"Wise Men," The, 28, 30, 43. 



Xenophon, quoted, 141, 276. 



Zacharias, sees apparition, 15 ; becomei 
dumb, 16 ; names his son John, 21 ; 
pronounces the " Benedictus," 21; 
his sacerdotal class, 27. 

Zealots, The, 63. 

Zealot-right, The, 558. 

Zelotes, Simon, 231. 

Zoroaster, 44. 

Zinzendorf , Count, 583. 

Zumpt, quoted, 36. 



PASSAGES OF THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT AND 
APOCRYPHA, 

Alluded to, or Quoted ; other than the Four Evangelists. 



Genesis i. 201 ; i. 27, 520 ; ii. 201 ; iv. 

3, 201 ; vii. 4, 10, 202 ; viii. 10, 12, 

202; xii. 6, 149; xiv. 22,567; xvi. 

7-13, 109 ; xviii. 6, 347 ; xviii. 8, 108 ; 

xviii. 109; xviii. 110; xix. 3, 108; 

xxii. 110 ; xxxiii. 18, 150; xxv. 9, 363; 

xxv. 22, 472 ; xxiv. 7, 40, 109 ; xxviii. 

12, 108 ; xxviii. 12, 109 ; xxix. 25-30, 

202; xxxii. 2, 108; xxxv. 19, 47; 

xxxv. 29, 363. 
Exodus iii. 110; iii. 6, 574; xii. 46, 678; 

xiii. 2-10, 11-17,582; xiii. 9, 16, 582; 

xvi. 202 ; xx. 202 ; xx. 26, 276 ; xxi. 

24, 274 ; xxi. 32, 603 ; xxx. 13, 126 ; 

xxx. 13, 436; xxxii. 110; xxxiv. 28, 

98 ; xxxv. 3, 203. 
Levit. xii. 24, 41 ; xii. 8, 41 ; xiii. 45, 

185; xvi. 20-31, 515; xviii. 2, 509; 

xviii. 46, 509; xix. 18, 277; xxi. 10, 

643 ; xxiii. 27-29, 203 ; xxiii. 5, 541 ; 

xxiv. 20, 274; xxvii. 30, 335; xxvii. 

30, 515 ; xxvii. 30, 586. 
Numbers v. 2, 509; v. 6, 538; vi. 1-21, 

16; vi. 9, 185; ix. 12, 678; xv. 32, 

203; xv. 37-40, 371; xv. 38, 583; 

xviii. 15, 16, 43; xviii. 21, 515; 

xviii. 21, 586; xix. 448; xix. 10, 

586; xx. 10, 269 ; xxi. 143 ; xxiv. 17, 

45; xxiv. 17, 158; xxv. 11, 558; 



xxvii. 8-11, 19; xxviii 9,212; xxix. 

7, 515. 
Beut. v. 26, 173; vi. 16, 104; vi. 5, 

463; vi. 4-9, 13-22, 582; viii. 3, 

103; xii. 6, 586; xiv. 22, 515; xiv. 

22-28, 586 ; xvii. 7, 457 ; xviii. 15, 

112; xviii. 18, 116; xviii. 15, 158; 

xix. 14, 253; xix. 21, 274; xxi. 22, 

23, 664; xxi. 23, 677; xxii. 11, 150; 

xxii. 12, 371 ; xxii. 21, 456; xxiii. 

25, 211 ; xxiii. 13, 518; xxv. 5, 573; 

xxvi. 14, 173. 
Joshua xviii. 16, 269. 
Judges ii. 110 ; vi. 22, 109 ; vi. 110 ; vi. 

14, 110 ; vi. 22, 110 ; vi. 19, 347 ; xiii 

15, 16, 108 ; xiii. 110 ; xiii. 22, 110 ; 
xiv. 12, 567. 

1 Sam. i. 24, 347 ; vi. 5, 475 ; xiv. 25. 
74; xv. 22, 212 ; xxi 212 ; xxii. 20-23, 
212. 

2 Sam. viii. 17, 212 ; xix. 22, 101 ; xix. 
27, 107 ; xxiv. 107. 

1 Kings ii. 27, 561 ; v. 4, 101 ; x. 1, 
332 ; xviii. 26, 282 ; xix. 8, 98 ; xxii. 
19, 108. 

2 Kings v. 27, 177 ; v. 184 ; v. 14, 15, 
185 ; v. 5, 567 ; xii. 4, 126 ; xvii. 24, 
150 ; xvii. 41, 150 ; xix. 15, 107 ; xix. 
107; xxiii. 10, 13, 14, 268. 



INDEX. 



723 



1 Chron. xii. 22, 108; xv. 11, 212; 
xxi. 1, 101 ; xxi. 20, 109 ; xxi. 30, 
109 ; xxiv. 10, 15 ; xxiv. 27 ; xlix. 10, 
158. 

2 Ghron. iv. 24, 567; xviii. 18, 107; 
xxiv. 6, 9, 126; xxiv. 18-22, 336; 
xxiv. 20, 587; xxx. 21-26, 204; 
xxxiv. 4, 5, 268. 

Ezra ii. 9, 537 ; iv. 2, 10, 150 ; viii. 15, 

163 ; x. 11, 475. 
Nehemiah vii. 14, 537 ; viii.' 2, 163 ; viii. 

9-12, 204; ix. 1, 163; xii. 29; xiii. 

15-22, 204. 
Esther v. 8, 566 ; vi. 14, 566. 
Job i. 6, 101 ; ii. 1-7, 101 ; iv. 18, 108 ; 

xxvii. 16, 567 ; xxxiii. 29, 30, 442. 
Psalms ii. 6-9, 116 ; viii. 2, 559 ; xvii. 

15, 255; xxii. 16, 18, 667; xxv. 13, 

253 ; xxxiv. 7, 111 ; xxxv. 5, 111 ; 

xxxv. 19, 626 ; xxxvii. 9, 253 ; xxxvii. 

11, 253 ; xxxix. 5, 296; xli. 9, 618 ; 
xlii. 1, 255 ; li. 12, 141 ; lxviii. 108 ; 
lxix. 4, 626; lxix. 9, 127; lxxxii. 6, 
481 ; xci. 104 ; xcii. 204 ; civ. 4, 107 ; 
cvi. 28, 173 ; cix. 6, 101 ; ex. 578 ; 
cxiii. 545 ; cxv. 624 ; cxvi. 624 ; 
cxvii. 624 ; cxviii. 545 ; cxviii. 624 ; 
cxviii. 22, 565 ; cxlvi. 8, 476. 

Isaiah vi. 1-3, 108 ; viii. 19, 173 ; ix. 

6, 116 ; ix. 7, 552 ; xi. 1-5, 10, 116 ; 
xix. 1, 642 ; xx. 4, 518 ; xxv. 656, 6 ; 
xxx. 29, 204 ; xl. 2, 7, 476 ; xlii. 1-4, 
217; xlix. 24, 327; liii. 49; liii. 2-12, 
116 ; liii. 12, 327 ; liii. 12, 621 ; liii. 

12, 667 ; liv. 13, 396 ; lv. 1, 255 ; lvi. 

7, 558 ; lviii. 6, 165 ; lviii. 13, 203 ; 
lx. 3, 45 ; lxi. 1, 2, 165 ; lxi. 10, 566 ; 
lxii. 5, 566 ; lxiii. 9, 110 ; lxv. 13, 
566. 

Jeremiah vii. 11, 558 ; xvii. 21, 203 ; xx. 

261 ; xxi. 12-14, 204 ; xxii. 30, 19 ; 

xxiii. 5, 6, 116 ; xxxi. 15, 47 ; xxxi. 

33, 141 ; xxxi. 33, 34, 396 ; xxxiii. 15, 

116 ; xli. 17, 39. 
Ezekiel viii. 1, 163; x. 1, 106; xiv. 1, 

163; xviii. 31, 141 ; xx. 1, 163; xx. 

12-24, 204 ; xxiv. 17, 185 ; xxviii. 14, 

107; xxxiii. 31, 163 ; xxxiv. 23, 116; 

xxxvi. 24-28, 141 ; xlvii. 454. 
Daniel iv. 13, 23, 107 ; vii. 9, 10, 108 ; 

vii. 13, 118; 315; 361; 411: 642; 

vii. 14, 552 ; 136 ; viii. 14, 831 ; viii. 



13, 107; ix. 21-23, 16; ix. 24, 45 
ix. 25, 116 ; x. 13, 107 ; x. 7, 109 
x. 8, 15, 17, 109. 

Rosea ii. 6, 204 ; ii. 9, 566 ; vi. 6, 192 
vi. 6, 212 ; xi. 1, 47. 

Joel ii. 26, 29, 396 ; iii. 18, 454. 

Amosi. 3, 442; ii. 6, 442. 

Micah v. 2, 36 ; v. 1, 37 ; v. 2, 46 
v. 2, 116. 

Nahum i. 3, 642. 

Haggai ii. 7, 116. 

Zech. ii. 12-15, 110; iii. 1, 101; iii, 8, 
116 ; vi. 15, 111 ; vii. 5, 163 ; ix. 9, 
116 ; ix. 9, 544 ; xi. 12, 603 ; xii. 8, 
111 ; xii. 60, 678; xiii. 4, 74; xiii. 7, 
116 ; xiii. 1,141 ; xiii. 7, 621. 

Malachi iii. 1, 116; iv. 5, 6, 74; iv. 5, 
112; iv. 2, 116; iv. 5, 6,430. 

ToUt iv. 3, 363 ; xii. 19, 108. 

Song ii. 1, 2, 16, 298. 

Cant. v. 1, 566. 

1 Mace. iv. 52, 59, 480; xi. 71, 643. 

2 Mace. i. 10, 69 ; iv. 44 ; 69 ; xi. 27, 
69 ; x. 9, 537. 

Acts i. 3, 115 ; i. 13, 223 ; i. 13, 226 
i. 13, 228; i. 13, 231; i. 13, 230 
i. 16, 611 ; iv. 12, 13, 119 ; iv. 13 
219; v. 36, 37, 209; v. 36, 37 
512; vi. 6, 10, 498; vii. 56, 70 
vii. 55, 118 ; ix. 7, 551 ; x. 47, 48 
221 ; x. 13, 15, 551 ; xii. 1, 223 
xii. 17, 229; xiii. 15, 164; xv. 13 
19, 229; xix. 13, 326; xx. 33, 567 
xxi. 18, 229 ; xxiii. 3, 638; xxvii. 3, 
611. 

Romans xvi. 25, 328. 

1 Cor. i. 21, 257; iv. 15, 584; vii. 



249 ; viii. 13, 
613 ; xv. 6, 704. 

2 Cor. xi. 25, 331. 

Gal. ii. 9, 229. 

Eph. iii. 9, 328. 

Col. i. 26, 328. 

1 Timothy i. 2, 584. 

2 Timothy ii. 8, 20. 
Titus i. 4, 584. 
Hebrews xiii. 12, 666. 
James v. 1, 2, 567. 

1 Peter v. 13, 584. 
1 John ii. 16, 98. 
Jude. ver. 17, 231. 
Rev. i. 13, 118. 



ix. 5, 181; xii 



724 SOTJKOES. 



SOURCES. 

[The following books have been consulted, and, so far as known, credited foi 
what use has been made of them. The list may be serviceable to those who de- 
sire to verify my quotations or to prosecute studies in this department.] 

Abbott, Rev. Lyman : Jesus of Nazareth. 1 vol. 

Ainslee, Rev. Robert : Translation of Tischendorf's Greek New Testament, 
lvol. 
Adams, Nehemiah, D.D. : Friends of Christ in the New Testament. 1 vol. 
Alexander, Joseph A., D.D. : Matthew Explained. 1 vol. 

" " Mark Explained. 1 vol. 

Alford, Henry, D.D. : New Testament Revised. 1 vol. 

u " Our Lord and His Twelve Disciples. 1 vol. 

" " Greek Testament, with Notes (on Evangelists). 1 voL 

Alger, W. R. : History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. 1 vol. 
Andrews, S. J. : Life of our Lord upon Earth. 1 vol. 
Anonymous. "Ecce Agnus Dei." 1 vol. 

" "EcceDeus." lvol. 

" "Ecce Homo." lvol. 

" Jesus of History. 1 vol. 

Augusttne • Homilies on the Gospel of St. John. 2 vols. 

il Sermons. 1 vol. 

Bagster : Polyglott Bible. 2 vols. 
Balfour, W. P. : Lessons from Jesus. 1 vol. 
Balfour, W. : Import of Sheol, Hades. 1 vol. 
Barclay, J. T. : City of the Great Bang. 1 vol. 
Baum, E. P. : Companion to the Bible. 1 vol. 
Bengel, J. A. : Gnomon of the New Testament. 2 vols. 
Bibliotheca Sacra. 30 vols. 

Bloomfield, Bishop : Greek Testament, with Notes. 2 vols. 
Blunt, Rev. J. H. : Dictionary of Devotional and Historical Theology. 1 voL 
Bourdillon, Rev. Francis : Parables of Our Lord. 1 vol. 
Briepot, Abbe : La Vie de N. S. Jesus-Christ. 3 vols. 
Brown, James : Bible Truths with Shakesperian Parallels. 1 vol. 

1 ' Rev. John : Discourses and Sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 vol* 

Bun sen, E. : Hidden Wisdom of Christ. 1 vol. 
Burt, N. C. : Hours among the Gospels. 1 vol. 
Calmet, A. : Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. 
Christian Examiner for 1854. 1 vol. 

Clark, Rev. G. W. : New Harmony of the Four Gospels. 1 vol. 
Clayton, G. : Angelology. 1 vol. 
Cobbe, F. P. : Studies, Old and New. 1 vol. 
Cox, Robert : Literature of the Sabbath Question. 2 vols. 
Crosby, Dr. Howard : Jesus and His Works. 1 vol. 
Cust, E. : Horse Dominicae. 1 vol. 



sources. 725 

De Pressens£, E. : Jesus Christ. 1 voL 

De Qulncey, Thomas : Theological Essays. 1 vol. 
" " Historical Essays. 1 vol. 

Dickenson, R. : Corrected Version of the New Testament. 1 voL 

Ellicott, Bishop : Historical Lectures on Jesus Christ. 1 vol. 

Eusebius : Ecclesiastical History and Life of Constantine — ed. 1638, folio. I 
vol. 

Ewald, H. : The Life of Jesus Christ. 1 vol. 

Fairbairn, Dr. Patrick : Typology of Scripture. 2 vols. 

Farmer, Hugh : Demoniacs of the New Testament. 1 vol. 

Fowler, Wm., LL.B. : Miracles. 1 vol. 

Furness, W. H. : Jesus and His Biographers. 1 vol. 
" " Jesus. 1vol. 

Gilmore, J. R. : Life of Christ. 1 voL 

Gresswell, Edward : Dissertations on the Harmony of the Four Gospels. 
vols. 

Hackett, H. B. : Illustrations of Scripture. 1 vol. 

Hale, W. H. : History of the Jews. 1 vol. 

Hammond's Paraphrase and Annotations on New Testament. 3 vols. 

Hanna : The Life of Christ. 6 vols. 

Hardwick, C. : Christ and other Masters. 2 vols. 

Hemans, Charles J. : Ancient Christianity and Sacred Art. 1 vol. 

Hengstenberg, E. W. : Christology. 3 vols. 

Herodotus : Translated by Rawlinson. 4 vols. 

Hill, Genl. D. H. : Sermon on the Mount. 1 vol. 

Howe, Fisher : True Site of Calvary. 1 vol. 

Jamieson, Mrs. A. : History of our Lord, as exemplified in Works of Art. 2 vola, 

Jarvis, S. F. : Chronological Introduction to History of the Church. 1 vol. 

Jennings, D. : Jewish Antiquities. 1 vol. 

Jones, Joel, LL.D. : Notes on the Scripture. 1 vol. 

Josephus : Translated by Whiston. 6 vols. 

Justin Martyr : Writings of. 1 vol. 

Lange : Life of the Lord Jesus. 5 vols. 

Leathes, S. : Witness of Old Testament to Christ. 1 vol. 
" " Paul to Christ. 1vol. 

Lowth, Bishop : Isaiah. 1 vol. 

McClintock and Strong : Cyclopaedia. 3 vols. 

Mackay, R. W. : Rise and Progress of Christianity. 1 vol. 

McWhorter, A. : Yahveh Christ. 1 vol. 

Michaelis, J. D. : Introduction to N. T. 6 vols. 

Miles, H. A. : Traces of Picture Writing in the Bible. 1 vol. 

Milman, Dean : History of the Jews. 3 vols. 

Moore, T. V. : The Last Days of Jesus. 1 vol. 

Mountpord, William : Miracles, Past and Present. 1 voL 

Murray : Hand-book of Syria and Palestine. 1 vol. 

Neander, A. : Life of Christ. 1 vol. 

Noyes : New Testament, Translated from Greek Text of Tischendorf. 1 vol. 

Olshausen, Dr. H. : Commentary, etc. 6 vols. 

Parker, Joseph : Homiletic Analysis of New Testament. 1 vol. 

Pliny : Natural History, Edition Bohn's Library. 6 vols. 



"26 SOURCES. 

Plumtre, Prof. : Christ and Christendom. 1 vol. 

Peime, W. C. : Tent Life in the Holy Land. 1 vol. 

Priestley, Joseph : Early Opinions Concerning Christ. 1 vol. 

Rammohun Roy : Precepts of Jesns. 1 vol. 

Renan, Ernst : Life of Jesus. 1 vol. 

Reville, Dr. Albert : The Devil. 1 vol. 

Robinson, Dr. E. : Biblical Researches, etc. 2 vols. 

Ryle, Rev. J. C. : Thoughts on the Gospel of St. John. 1 vol 

Schaff, Dr. P. : History of the Christian Church. 3 vols. 

" " Person of Christ. 1vol. 

Schenkel : Sketch of the Character of Jesus. 2 vols. 
Smallbrook, Bishop : on Miracles. 2 vols. 
Smith, Dr. Wm. : Chronological Tables. 1 vol. 

" " Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. 

" " New Testament History. 1vol. 

Small Books • ■$ ^ tate of ■ M - an Defore tne Promulgation of Christianity. 1 vol 
( Greek Philosophy from the Age of Socrates to Christ. I vol 
Stackhouse, T. : History of Holy Bible. 6 vols. 
Stanley, Prof. A. P. : Sinai and Palestine. 1 vol. 
Stephen, Sir George : Life of Christ. 1 voL 
Stier, R. : The Words of the Lord Jesus. 6 vols. 
Story, W. W. : A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem. 1 vol. 
Strauss, D. F. : New Life of Jesus. 2 vols. 
Stroud, Dr. W. : Physical Causes of the Death of Christ. 1 vol. 
Tacitus : Annals. 1 vol. 

Taylor, Bp. Jeremy : History of Life and Death of Jesus Christ, i voL 
Taylor, Charles : The Gospel in the Law. 1 vol. 
Tertullian : Works. 3 vols. 
Tischendorf, C. : Nov. Test. Greece, ex Sinaitico Cod. 1 vol. 

" Origin of the Four Gospels. 1 vol. 

Tholuck, Aug. : The Sermon on the Mount. 1 vol. 

" The Gospel of John. 1 vol. 

Thomson, W. M. : The Land and the Book. 2 vols. 
Thrupp, J. F. Ancient Jerusalem. 1 voL 
Thucydides : Goeller's Edition. 2 vols. 

Townsend, G. : New Testament arranged in Chronological Order. 1 voL 
Trench : Studies in the Gospel. 1 vol. 
" On the Miracles. 1 vol. 
4 ' On the Parables. 1 vol. 

Turpie, D. M. : The Old Testament in the New. 1 vol. 
Uhlhorn, Dr. G. : Modern Representations of the Life of Jesus. 1 vol. 
Van Dyke, Rev. Dr. H. T. : The Lord's Prayer. 1 vol. 
Veith, J. E. : Life Pictures of Passion of Christ. 1 vol. 
West, Dr. N. : Complete Analysis of the Bible. 1 vol. 
Whately, Arehbishop : The Kingdom of Christ. 1 vol. 

" " Scripture Revelation of a Future State. 1 voL 

Young, John, LL.D. : The Christ of History. 1 voL 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



DESIGNED BY 

ALBERT LEIGHTOJST RAWSOK 

ENGRAVED BY 

LINTON, FILMER, AND OTHERS. 



Ideal Head op Jesus (opposite the first chap.), after the celebrated painting 
by Paul Delaroche, and is a photo-engraving from a steel-plate. This picture 
by Delaroche is, of course, open to criticism, as are all others, but the expression 
certainly combines in a remarkable degree those qualities of dignity, force, and 
gentleness for which Jesus was distinguished, and thus more nearly accords with 
an enlightened conception of the Son of God. 

All of the so-called heads of Jesus are ideals of the artists, made to supply the 
demands of certain believers in the several ages, and they are of every possible 
variety of character and expression, as they were designed to represent the teach- 
ing, laboring, healing, suffering, or triumphant Christ. The most ancient of these 
that have been preserved, that are worthy of the name of fine-art works, are 
engraved on precious stones, and must be assigned to quite a recent age, when 
the Italian revival of art found it necessary to supply the multitude of worshipers 
with some visible image of the divine man. The best of these is called, " The 
Emerald of the Vatican," and is a copy of the head of Jesus in Rafaelle's cartoon 
of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. 

The heads engraved by Albert Diirer are very artistic ideals of the notion that 
the Messiah must have been repulsive and unlovely in appearance. The Italians 
(Leonardo da Vinci, Rafaelle, Guido, Guercino, Titian, etc.) made their ideals 
weak and womanish, without intellectual force or manly vigor, and have in nearly 
every instance lowered their hero beneath the average appearance of men in active 
life. 

The recent attempts of Europeans and Americans have served only to show 
that the artist is incapable of painting any ideal above or beyond his own char- 
acter; and if that falls below the pure and lofty ideal which is universally 
given to the conception of the character of Jesus, then the work must reflect 
upon the subject to its disadvantage. The all-healing Messiah could only be 
represented faithfully as the merciful physician and restorer to spiritual and 
physical health by an artist who was qualified, first, by having the almost divine 
attribute of a soul that is willing, for the sake of relieving a suffering brother, to 



730 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

take his disease upon himself, or his criminal shame as his own ; and, second, the 
ability to reproduce the expression of countenance which will convey that will- 
ingness to self -sacrifice. The artist who would not so sacrifice himself is less 
than the ideal of Jesus which every believer holds sacred, and is, therefore, inca- 
pable of conceiving the proper character of the divine physician. And this ia 
also true of any other aspect of the many-sided character of the Great Teacher. 
That such an artist lives we cannot determine ; but that any such picture has 
been produced we are certain, and can only wait. It seems to many persons that 
this subject in all its aspects, whether representing Jesus as teacher, healer, or 
the divine man, is above and beyond the possible achievement of art. 

The early fathers were influenced by the Jewish habits of thought, which 
regarded every representation of the human form, and more especially any at- 
tempts at imaging the divine, with horror, and therefore the only devices used 
were such as the dove, the fish, the lyre, the anchor, the ship under sail, etc. 
The very earliest date that can be assigned to any head of Jesus engraved on a 
gem (and there are hundreds known) is to the age when the emperors sustained 
a school of engraving as an appendage to the court, as is mentioned in a law of 
the Emperor Leo, A. D. 886-911. 

The most popular pictures representing Jesus are those of the passion, includ- 
ing trial, incidents on the way to Calvary and the crucifixion. These pictures 
are fourteen in number, and are known to Roman Catholics as the "Fourteen 
Stations of the Cross." The Catholic Church has added very much to their pop- 
ularity by the devotional custom that has obtained in all parts of the world 
wherever this church is to be found. These fourteen pictures adorn the walls 
of every Catholic church, and during the Lenten season great devotion is paid 
to them by the faithful in the exercise of what is called the "forty hours devo- 
tion " when in commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus the faithful 
linger in the churches, going from one picture to another, in proper order, de- 
voutly prostrating themselves and repeating a different and stated prayer before 
each ' ' station. " The demand for these pictures has thus been stimulated to such 
an extent that the portrayal of these scenes has commanded the attention of 
the best talent, both of painters and sculptors. They are generally executed in 
vivid, life-like colors. 

If we must have pictures of Jesus, it seems a pity that they cannot be the 
work of artists who are as free as possible from the monkish traditions of the 
Romish Church, and of the effete whims concerning Greek art, and who will take 
the time and do the work of informing themselves on the manners and customs 
of the Syrians, and especially of the Jews in the first century A. D. , and who 
would endeavor to present the man Jesus, the native of Palestine, in such a 
character that we should find it natural to respect and love him as a powerful 
and good person. So far every attempt to represent the person or character of 
Jesus has been a vote for Rome, the head, the drapery, and often the accessories, 
carrying the mind of the beholder to Rome instead of to Jerusalem. 

Map of Palestine m the Time op Christ (p. 15). — This map gives 
only the most important places, the hundreds of small villages having been omit- 
ted to avoid crowding. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 731 

Shepherds' Field, Bethlehem (p. 23). — The side hill and fields east of 
the convent and village of Bethlehem bear the name of The Shepherds' Field, 
and have been used as a pasture, as they are now, from the most .ancient time. 
The soil is kept from washing down the steep by stone walls, forming terraces, 
on which there are a few trees, the remains of orchards of olives and figs. The 
shepherds watch their flocks day and night, very few having a fold, sleeping 
near them under a tent of coarse cloth, or of leaves and grass. 

It was in one of these fields, east from the terraced hillside, that the beauti- 
ful idyl of Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi occurred, forever sanctifying the toils of 
common life, and shedding a glory over the harvest-field. 

The scene is also associated with David, first as the shepherd boy, tending his 
father's flocks, then as the brave leader and chief, contending with his enemies, 
and singing the praises of the great Leader who assists all who contend against 
evil ; and after that as the king twice crowned as ruler over the Jews. A well 
is pointed out there as the one whose waters David thirsted for with a resistless 
longing, which was suddenly changed into regret when he learned that its 
water had been brought to him at the risk of good men's lives. 

The village on the hill is not very ancient, although it may be on the site of 
the original town. It is not again mentioned in Scripture after the birth of 
Jesus, which occurred not in the village, but, as Justin Martyr says (a.d. 150), 
"in a certain cave very close to the village." 

The village is built on a low hill, which is west of, and separated a little by a 
shallow depression, from the convent ; it is triangular, walled in, and contains 
three thousand people, who are nearly all makers of beads, crucifixes, boxes, 
models of the holy places, &c. , for sale to pUgrims. The manufacture of relics is 
also carried on to an extent which is alarming to the true antiquarian, although 
very profitable to those concerned. The imitations can always be detected by a 
little care and scrutiny. 

Husks (p. 22). — The Carob tree, a species of locust, bears the long, sweet- 
ish pods (ten inches), somewhat like the Lima bean pods, which are called husks 
in Luke xv. 16, and St. John's bread by pilgrims. The tree grows everywhere 
in Palestine, and the Levant as far south as Hebron, and is a large and hand- 
some object, with its deep green dense foliage of round glossy leaves, more 
especially in the dry season, for it is an evergreen. The Greeks call it keratia 
(horn), from the horn shape of the pods. The pods (just before they are ripe) 
are steeped in water, forming a pleasant acid drink. They are also sold in all 
Oriental bazaars for food, more commonly for pigs, cattle, and horses, but they 
are only eaten by the very poorest of the people. They furnish, by boiling, a 
poor quality of molasses (dibs). 

Nazareth (p. 24) is first mentioned in Matthew ii. 23, or if taken in the 
order of time, in Luke i. 26, as the scene of the annunciation to Mary of the 
birth and character of Jesus. This place was unknown, or unmentioned in his- 
tory, before the birth of Jesus, but since that event its name has become a 



732 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

household word throughout the Christian world. The city is now built on a 
Bide hill, overlooking a plain, and probably not far from the ancient site, a little 
lower on the same hill, and has about 5,000 inhabitants. It is very well built, 
nearly every house being of stone, flat roofed, and of two stories or more. The 
Maronite convent is built close under the steep place which is shown as the one 
down which the people were determined to cast Jesus. There are many other ob- 
jects and localities pointed out to visitors as remnants of antiquity, but which have 
little claim to such honor, because the stone of the district is a soft white marl, 
easily crumbled and soon falling to pieces ; and therefore it is not probable that 
any house there is more than one or two hundred years old. The fountain, the 
valley, and the fourteen hills around the city have not changed, and must pre- 
sent the same general appearance as when the son of the carpenter grew up 
there. The valley runs nearly east and west, and is about a mile long by a 
quarter wide. The hills are from 500 to 100 feet high above the valley ; the 
highest, called Naby Ismail, being 1,800 feet above the ocean, and 500 above the 
valley. The soil is rich, and sustains a great variety of trees, flowers, vines, 
and produces fruit, vegetables, and grain in abundance. 

The view from the summit of Naby Ismail, behind Nazareth, to the north- 
west, is most extensive, and includes many well-known and interesting Scripture 
sites, some of which are noted also in later history. South-east the long brown 
crest of Carmel juts out below the Bay of Acre, with the blue sea beyond ; on 
its east end there are memories of Elijah and Baal's priests, Ahab, the "fifties," 
and on its western end, near the sea, is a convent dating from the Crusades, and 
the plain of Esdraelon, level and green at its base ; the hills of Samaria, inclosing 
the city of Samaria, and the mountain Ebal (and Cerizim behind it) by Shechem, 
Gilboa, Little Hermon, and its speck of the village of Nam, and Shunem not far 
off ; the Kishon river, the village of Jezreel : Mount Tabor, with memories of 
Deborah and Barak, and later of Napoleon ; Gilead, purple and tremulous in the 
east, rising into the high plateau of Jaulan, over which, to the north-east, the 
shining crest of Hermon above the clouds, lifting up so many ruined pagan 
temples on its sides and summits. The Mount of Beatitudes (Hattin) just hides 
Capernaum at the north end of the Sea of Galilee ; the heights of Saf ed, Jebel 
Jermuk, and the hill on which Hazor once stood, are to the north, and over 
them appears, like a still blue cloud, the range of Lebanon. 

Jebel Kaukab marks the site of Cana, lying at its foot ; and there is the sea 
over Acre again ; St. John of Acre, full of mediagval history, full of dust and 
ruins, of Crusading times and later ages of war. 

Nazareth (p. 35). See page 731. 

Bethlehem (p. 36). See Shepherd's Field, page 23. 

Hebron (p. 82).— There has been a "city" on or near the site of the 
present place, which is called Khulil, The Friend (of God), meaning Abraham, 
ever since the time of the earliest records in history. The whole district is favor- 
able to an agricultural life, and is noted for its good soil and the great variety of its 
products, especially the vine, figs, olives, and is as well watered as any part of the 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 733 

country south of Jerusalem. In its days of prosperity, under David and Solomon, 
rvery foot of land was carefully dressed ; the hill-sides, which are now stony and 
barren, were terraced, and supported a dense population. The crops are stiU 
excellent, and are rotated in the most scientific manner (from tradition), grain 
and vegetables giving place to melons and cucumbers. 

The most interesting antiquity in the village is the Haram, or Mosque of 
Hebron, which is the successor of some more ancient structure built over the 
Cave of Machpelah, in which were buried Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It 
is possible that some part of this building, the beveled (or rebated) stones, are 
the remains of some work of Solomon or David, the only point against this sup- 
position being the silence of Josephus, who would probably have noticed such a 
work and given it prominence in his Antiquities. It may then have been, as it is 
claimed by some critics, the work of some one since the time of the Eomans. 
Or, more probable than any theory, the Haram is a relic of several ages, put into 
its present shape some time during or after the Crusades. 

The successor of the Oak of Mamre is a terebinth-tree, nearly two miles from 
Hebron, in the opposite direction from the real site. It measures twenty-two 
feet in circumference, and shades a space of about ninety feet diameter. The 
church of Constantine was built near this tree, a few of the stones of which are 
still to be seen, some large ones measuring fourteen feet in length. 

King David lived there seven years and a half, as king of Judah, and was 
crowned there king of all the tribes. 

Class is the chief manufacture at present, which is made up into a great 
variety of articles for domestic use, and ornaments for women's wear, such as 
rings, ear-rings, bracelets, anklets, which are of every possible tint and pattern. 
Many women are so poor as to be unable to get any better jewelry than this 
cheap glass. 

Iisnsr, or Khan (p. 40). — The only public-house offered by the Orientals is 
a two-story structure, with a large inclosed space for animals and goods. The 
lower story is used for storage and for feeding and housing animals, and the 
upper for the travelers. In some of the great khans, as at Damascus, the court 
is roofed over, and the building is three or four stories high, and has a great 
number of rooms. No furniture or bedding is ever provided by the innkeeper, 
and every needed article must be supplied by the lodger. This makes it neces- 
sary to have camels for baggage besides for riding, and so every party of half a 
dozen forms a little caravan of ten to fifteen camels, or camels, horses, and don- 
keys. 

The inn of Chimham is the first mentioned in the Scriptures, and .vas at 
Bethlehem, on the road to Egypt, as alluded to by Jeremiah (xli. 17) ; and it ia 
not improbable that it was the same public-house in which Jesus was born. Its 
site is now occupied by a convent, which dates from the Crusades, if not from 
the time of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, and is the oldest Chris- 
tian church in the world. It was repaired by King Edward IV. of England ; 
Baldwin, the famous Crusader and king of Jerusalem, was crowned in it. 

The building is venerable and majestic, and interesting from its material his- 
tory. Tts roof is made of the cedar of Lebanon, and its marble column? were 



734 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

gathered from many countries, the gifts of princes and devout persons. Some 
of the Byzantine pillars are painted with curious devices, which are almost 
obliterated, being very much time-worn and weather-stained. 

The history and tradition of the " Cave of the Nativity," which is under the 
church, being reached by a number of steps cut down in the solid rock, and in 
which it is asserted that Jesus was born, extends back almost to the death of 
John the Evangelist and Revelator. Caves and recesses in the rock are now 
used, and probably always have been, as a refuge for cattle, and also for people, 
as is often noticed in the Scriptures. But still there is very little to be said in 
favor of the cave having been a part of the original inn. Jerome translated the 
Bible in a grotto at Bethlehem, which may have been in this same cave (where a 
grotto is shown as his studio), although it has been very much enlarged in later 
times, and is now a very showy, if not actually a splendid room, filled with gilt 
ornaments of religious interest, the gifts of the pious pilgrims of many ages. 
Marble pavement, marble columns, panels, silver, brass, and copper lamps, with 
gold ornaments, and massive metal candlesticks, highly enriched with engraving 
and gilding, and inscriptions sculptured and gilded ; and more showy, and ap- 
parently more valuable, than all the rest, a radiated star around the inscription 
recording the birth of the Saviour, made of colored glass, in imitation of precious 
stones, and placed over the grotto which is pointed out as the very spot on 
which Jesus was born. There was formerly a star composed of real gold and 
precious stones, including many valuable diamonds, emeralds, &c., which was 
removed by some avaricious and unworthy custodian, and the present cheap 
imitation substituted. The walls, and in many places the roof also, are covered 
with richly dyed silk hangings. 

Sinai (p. 48). — The Sinai of tradition and of many modern investigators is 
shown in the view, which was taken from the plain Er Rahah, a little west of the 
convent. The whole group of peaks is named Jebel Miisa, Mount Moses, and 
the peak nearest to the convent is called Ras Sufsafa, Head of the Willow, from 
a single willow tree which grows on it. 

The summit is about 2,000 feet above the plain, and has on it a chapel and 
the ruins of a mosque, which may be reached by a few minutes of hard climb- 
ing. The whole mountain stands out against the sky like a huge altar, being 
separated by valleys on all sides from the mountains around. 

The plain of Er Rahah is two miles long, half a mile wide, and slopes gently 
towards the mountain, forming a natural amphitheatre on which many thou- 
sands could camp and distinctly view the mountain from its base to its summit. 

Succoth (the Booths) (p. 84). — It is still called by its ancient name, pro- 
nounced by the Arabs Sakut, and is believed to mark the place where Jacob 
crossed the Jordan river, a few miles below Bethshan. The booths must have 
been on the east side of the river, but the name has been transferred across, for 
Sakut is now on the west side. Other names have passed over Jordan in the 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 735 

same manner, as " Jebel Musa," near Jericho, Moses' Mountain, meaning the 
one from which he viewed the promised land, which was on the east side. 

The vessels for Solomon's Temple were cast in the clay ground on the Jordan 
banks, between Succoth and Zartan, and there are very fine and deep clay beds 
there now, the clay from which is hard, almost slaty, easily softened and 
moulded, and the best known for casting metals in to this day. 

The whole vicinity of Succoth abounds in springs and brooks, and there is 
" much water" now, as there was in the time of John's ministry (John iii. 22). 

The " ford" (so called, for there is no passable place as a ford there) opposite 
Jericho, near the Jews' castle, is one of the ' ' localities " of the monks. 

Ford op the Jordan (p. 58). The view is of a place near Nimrim (the 
Panthers), where there is a rather difficult ford in the season of low water, but 
none at all in the winter. There are several fords, in the summer time, which 
are used by travelers and the natives, as opposite Bethshan, near Succoth, just 
north of Wady Yabes (Jabesh), which is supposed to be the same as the Betha- 
bara (Beth-bara) of Judges vii. 24. There are several others north of the mouth 
of the Jabbok. Ten miles south of that river there is a good one on the road from 
Nablus (Shechem) to Es Salt (Ramoth in Gilead), and there are ruins of a Roman 
bridge there also. There are also fords both above and below the Pilgrim's 
Bathing Place (Latin), opposite Jericho; the upper one is supposed to be the one 
crossed by Joshua. The river below the " bathing place" is swift and deep, and 
cannot be forded. 

Cartel (p. 90).— The mountain is 1,800 feet at the east, and 500 feet high at 
the west end, and is nearly eighteen miles long from the site of the sacrifice of 
Baal's prophets to the convent overlooking the sea. It is the most picturesque 
region in Palestine, in variety of hill-sides, mountain slopes, covered with the 
most luxuriant vegetation, and carpeted with countless flowers. The forests 
abound in wild game, such as partridge, quail, woodcock, hare, jackal, wolf, 
hyena, boar, and bear. 

The mountain has been famous from remote antiquity as a holy place, having 
had among the visitors to its shrines the ancient philosopher Pythagoras and the 
Emperor Vespasian. 

The present building, standing on the west end near the sea, was erected in 
1830, over the ancient ruins of the convent originally standing there, which was 
founded by St. Louis of France, who named the order " The Barefoot Carmelite 
Friars." 

Capernaum (p. 112), which had been so utterly destroyed as to leave 
scarcely any trace of its site, has been restored to history, beyond a doubt, by 
the researches and discoveries of W. M. Thomson {Land and Book), and the 
Palestine Exploration (Jerusalem Recovered). The ruins lie scattered over a hill 
called Tell Hum, which rises from the water edge of the Sea of Galilee, and 
which is an excellent site for a city, being high, commanding a wide prospect 
across the sea south, over the plains and hills east, the plain of Gennesaret and 



736 LIST OF ILLTJSTKATIONS. 

the hills of Galilee west, and the mountains around Safed, while snow-capped 
Hermon is in view north-east. There is a ruin of the synagogue, which may have 
been built or improved by the centurion mentioned in Matthew, who was in 
command of Roman troops stationed there. The building was made of lime- 
stone, brought from a distance, and there are a few pieces of sculptured orna- 
ments, columns, cornices, lintels left, which indicate that the structure was mag- 
nificent in size and workmanship. One of the lintels had sculptured on it a pot 
of manna, as an ornament, among scrolls and other figures, which proves that 
the building "was a religious edifice built by Jews. 

There was also a cemetery, with graves and regular tombs cut in the rock or 
built above the surface. The ruins cover a space nearly as large as the town of 
Tiberias, and the place may have contained, in its greatest prosperity, fifty thou- 
sand inhabitants. The materials may have been carried away during the. last 
thousand years, to reappear in other cities, or have been burnt into lime, as has 
been done at other places. 

The other claimants to the site of Capernaum do not present ruins which 
answer the demand of the text, and Tell Hum does. The Evangelists did not 
give topographical indications directly, for they were not writing a geography ; 
while Josephus, as a soldier and engineer, was careful to notice localities, and his 
description of Capernaum and other places is very complete. 

The miracle of the feeding five thousand persons with food created for the 
purpose, was considered by all the Evangelists of very great importance, and as 
they have all mentioned Capernaum and Bethsaida in connection with the ac- 
count, geographers have been so perplexed as to attempt to invent a second Beth- 
saida at the head of the lake, west of Capernaum. 

The preaching by the sea may be located somewhere along the coast between 
Tell Hum and Tabigah, where there are several creeks and inlets in which the 
boat (ship in the Gospel) could ride in safety only a few feet from the shore, and 
where the multitude could be seated on the dry shore, where there are many 
boulders of basalt, smooth and convenient for seats. 

The first four of the Apostles were fishermen, and there are no more favorable 
places for carrying on their business than this very shore, where their boats 
could be kept in safety, and their nets mended on the hard shell-paved beach. 
(See Tell Hum.) 

Cana (p. 120). — There is a division of opinion among scholars on the question 
of the site of the ancient Cana, one party holding that Kefr Kenna, a village 
three miles north-west of Nazareth, is the true site, and another that what is 
now called Kana-el-Jelil (Cana of Galilee), is the site of the village in whijh 
the marriage -feast was held, at which it is said that the wine was created from 
water. 

Kana-el-Jelil was selected as the more beautiful of the two in a pictorial 
sense, and besides the evidence seems to be greatly in its favor. It lies on the 
end of a ridge, at the foot of Jebel Kaukab, just at the border of the plain of 
Buttauf (plain of Issachar), eight miles north of Nazareth. The site is very 
favorable for fine views, overlooking the plain, and including distant glimpses of 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 737 

Beveral mountains well known in Bible narrative, as Hermon, Tabor, Gilboa, 
Carmel, and Lebanon. 

The ancient writers (Antoninus Martyr, a.d. 590; St. Willibald, a.d. 780; 
Saswulf, A.D. 1103; Maurice Sanutus, A.D. 1321; Breydenbach. a.d. 1483; 
Anselm, a.d. 1507; Adrichomis, a.d. 1575) unite in describing the site, as be- 
lieved to have been correctly located in their day, at the foot of a high round 
mountain on the north, a plain, broad and fertile on the south, and with Sep- 
phoris between it and Nazareth, all of which particulars are found at Kana-el- 
JeliL These writers also described six water-pots and a triclinium where the 
feast was held, the whole being in a cavern or grotto, underground, like that of 
the Nativity at Bethlehem, and also of the Annunciation at Nazareth. 

The water-pots shown there are not reliable as antiquities, because they are a 
common article of domestic use, and are made when wanted, in every age, in 
every year, and a few broken jars can always be had to lend their appearance in 
aid of a popular tradition. It is therefore not surprising that water-pots are 
shown at both sites of Cana, and both claimed as veritable antiquities. 

The general truth of the event, the Galilean village, the custom of the people 
keeping water and wine in jars of pottery, can be proven beyond question ; but 
the house in which the feast was held, and the jars that held the water made 
wine, have passed away into their original dust. 

John's Prison, Macilerus (p. 148). — Herod the Great built a palace and a 
prison, and probably bath-houses also, at the hot springs of Callirrhoe, on the 
river Main, about eight miles from the Dead Sea. Josephus describes it t, Wars, 
vi., c. 1) as "a very rocky hill, elevated to a great height, ditched about with 
valleys on all sides to such a depth that the eye cannot reach their bottoms, that 
on the west reaching to the Lake Asphaltitis ; and on that same side the castle 
had the tallest top of its hill." The cliffs are 200 feet high, about 150 apart, and 
the stream from the hot springs is six to ten inches deep, 50 to 100 feet wide, 
and runs four or five miles an hour. The ruins of the castle or palace, and per- 
haps other houses, are scattered over several acres of the ridge, nearly half a 
mile from the ravine. The finest view is had by moonlight, when the almost 
daylight of the full moon gives a wild and strange character to the scene. There 
has as yet been no exploration on the east of the Dead Sea, except at a few 
points, and it is believed that the richest results would follow from the examina- 
tion of certain well-known ruins, such as these at Machagrus, and at Heshbon, 
Eabbath-Ammon, by scientific men, properly provided with instruments and 
assistants. 

Shechem (p. 149). —The village lies between two hills, Ebal and Gerizim, 
which are on the great dividing ridge between the Jordan and the Mediterranean 
Sea. It is now called Nablus, a corruption of Neapolis, the Greek name given 
to it by Vespasian. John speaks of it as Sychar, and Pliny called it Mabortha. 

The valley is about 1,500 feet wide, between the two mountains, and its 
general level is 1,800 above the sea. The valley is full of springs of good wat*~, 
the people counting as many as eighty. Some of these springs send the waters 
47 



738 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

into the Jordan, and others into the Mediterranean. The soil is rich, and very 
productive in orchards, gardens, and fields, and is not equalled in Palestine for its 
glory of fruit and verdure, running brooks, and singing birds. 

Abraham pitched his tent under the oak of Moreh, and there first set up the 
worship of the living God, near to Shechem. In this vicinity was also most 
probably the residence of Melchizedek, the King of Salem, in or near that little 
modern village of Salim. The Samaritans also claim that the Moriah on which 
Abraham laid out Isaac ready for the sacrifice was Mount G-erizim. 

Shechem also was the residence of the grandson of Abraham, Jacob, who 
bought a field and dug a well. (See Jacob's Well.) 

It is probably on account of these well-known facts in the history of the place 
that Moses regarded it as the most sacred spot in Canaan, and the only one con- 
secrated to the worship of the living God, and that accordingly he ordered the 
great assembly of the people there. 

The experiment has been made of two readers stationed on opposite sides of 
the valley, on Ebal and Gerizim, who read the blessings and the curses in a loud 
voice, and were distinctly heard by each other. 

The bones of Joseph were also brought from Egypt by the children of Israel, 
and buried, as tradition says, in the level spot close under the foot of Mount 
Ebal. 

Jacob's Well (p. 153). — The remarkable work called Jacob's Well is in the 
plain of Mukna, a mile and a half from the village of Nablus (Shechem). 
Joseph's Tomb is in plain view, nearer Mount Ebal. 

There are none who dispute the identity of this well as having been the work 
of Jacob and his servants. The most surprising thing about it is that a well 
should have been dug at all in a place which abounds in natural springs of 
bright, sweet water, and sufficient in quantity to supply several brooks. The 
visitor now first descends into a chamber about ten feet, in the floor of which is 
the mouth of the well, only large enough to admit the body of a man. This 
opening is broken through an arch which has been not very long ago built over 
the well. The shaft is seven feet six inches in diameter, and seventy-five feet 
deep down to the rubbish, which is supposed to be fifty to seventy-five feet 
deeper. It is lined with rough masonry, having been dug through alluvial soil. 

There are ruins of the church, which once stood over the well, scattered 
about, but no signs of any curb or inclosing wall of any kind around the mouth 
(John iv. 1). 

This is one of the few places in Palestine that is not "honored" by some 
edifice or monument ' ' locating " the Bible narrative ; but it is said that the 
Greeks (Russians) have lately bought the place, with the intention of building » 
church over the well 

The valley of Mukna, the ancient Moreh, is one of the richest in the produc- 
tion of grain, fruit, and vegetables in all the land ; — vines, figs, oranges, lemons, 
pomegranates, in short, every fruitful tree, and all growing beside never-failing 
streams of pure water. The valley extends for about seven miles, and is the 
fairest expanse of cultivated soil in all the land. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 739 

Samaritan priest (p. 159). The Assyrians carried away to the Euphrates 
the Jews of Samaria, and sent their own people to occupy the cities and the land. 
From these emigrants the modern Samaritans are descended. They have kept a 
copy of the law as it was on their day, 500 B. C. , and still celebrate the ancient form 
of worship, although there are only about one hundred of them left. The dress of 
the priest may be, and probably is, a correct following of the ancient style, and its 
description answers the requirements of the text in Exodus very closely. The 
enmity between the Jews and Samaritans began when they were refused to have 
a share in rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem, after the return from the captivity 
in Babylon, when they built a temple for themselves on Mount G-erizim, at She- 
chem, in the time of Alexander. This was destroyed by John Hyrcanus, b. c. 129. 
In the fifth century a.d. there was a Christian Church on Gerizim, but only a few 
stones of the foundation are left. 

Tell Hum (p. 168). — In determining the antiquity of a name which is 
found attached to a certain locality, it is sometimes needful to follow it through 
several changes it may have undergone in passing from one language to another. 
In this archaeological skill Dr. Robinson was especially noted and successful, hav- 
ing recovered hundreds of Bible names from the modern Arabic titles to places 
noted in the Scriptures. W. M. Thomson was the first to discover the name of 
Capernaum in the Arabic Tell Hum. He says: "Hum is the last syllable of 
Kefr-na-hum, as it was anciently spelled, and it is a very common mode of cur- 
tailing old names to retain only the final syllable. Thus we have Zib for Ach- 
zib, and Fik for Aphcah, etc. In this instance Kefr has been changed to Tell — 
why ? A deserted site is generally named Tell, but not Kef?' (which is applied to 
a village) ; and when Capernaum became a heap of rubbish it would be quite 
natural for the Arabs to drop the Kefr, and call it simply Tell Hum." (See 
Capernaum. ) 

Scribes and books (p. 180). 

Cedars (p. 181). — There are few remains of the ancient forests on the moun- 
tains of Syria, and the cedars are the most noble specimens now standing. On 
the slopes of the Lebanon range there are several groves of the ancient cedars, 
one of which is near the Beirut-Damascus carriage road, and is quite easy of 
access to travelers, who have brought away thousands of the cones, which are 
nearly three inches long by two inches diameter, and one especially, Robert Mor- 
ris, LL.D., in 1868, distributed several thousands among Sunday-school scholars 
as incentives to a study of the natural history of Palestine. The largest cedars 
are found near the highest summit of Lebanon (Dhor el Khodib), close to the 
limit of perpetual snow. 

Bottles (p. 194). — There are several kinds of bottles used in the East, made 
of skins, earth, glass, and of metal. The skins are of various sizes, as they are 
taken from rabbits, kids, sheep, cows, holding from one gallon to thirty or forty. 
These are usually prepared with the hair turned inside, and so are likely to give 
the water or wine a peculiar flavor. These skin-bottles are the kind alluded to 
in the Scriptures, where new bottles are recommended for strength ; and they 
are also used in Spain now as well as in Palestine and other eastern countries. 



740 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The bottles of glass do not differ from ours, except that they are x>f very sin 
gular forms. Those found in tombs and in ancient ruins are, without doubt^ 
veritable antiquities, and have the well-known appearance of old, time-worn, 
decayed glass. 

Earthen bottles, or jars and pitchers, are always finely formed, and often 
elegantly ornamented with figures and colors. They are in constant use, as pails 
are with us, and are seen in the hands or on the heads of the women, morning 
and evening, at the wells, or on the way to and from. 

Metals, especially copper and bronze, were used for bottles and cups, and 
most of the smaller vessels, such as are made of tin or tinned iron with us, in 
the East are made of copper or brass. The ancients did not make brass, but 
bronze. The ancient pieces of money are bronze, as also many articles, such as 
knives, swords, handles, dishes, bowls, etc., and this compound was of copper 
and tin, the union of copper and zinc forming brass being a modern invention. 

Ancient Bottles (p. 197). 

Pool op Hezekiah (p. 199). — This pool is cut in the solid rock, and is oi 
great antiquity, and is the work of Hezekiah, King of Judah, who "made a 
pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city ; " and also " stopped the 
upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the 
city of David." 

Jerusalem is chiefly dependent on the rains for its supply of water, and every 
house has under it one or more cisterns. 

The Hezekiah pool is 250 feet long, 150 wide, and capable of holding millions 
of gallons of water, which is used to supply several bath-houses. The pool 
is inclosed by houses on every side, one of which is a large hotel, kept by 
Europeans. 

The question of where the pool of Bethesda was, and which ruin or present 
pool is the true site, if any now remains, is one of the unsettled problems in the 
map of Jerusalem. Among the sites offered is the great pool or reservoir north 
of the Temple site, and now called the Pool of Bethesda, near the St Stephen 
Gate, and which has been lined with masonry and cemented for holding water, 
although it is now dry ; 360 feet long, 130 wide, 75 deep. 

Another, called by Eusebius and the Bordeaux Pilgrim the twin pools, which 
has been lately found at the north-west angle of the Temple area, a large reser- 
voir, 165 feet long by 48 wide (with a dividing wall running lengthwise, and both 
sides arched over, and now built over). The water is used by the Convent of the 
Sisters of Sion. The Arch of Ecce Homo is near the place. 

Mr. Williams {Holy City, p. 484) thinks the Bethesda pool was near the St. 
Ann Church, and now almost completely destroyed. 

Chancellor Crosby selects the Virgin Fountain, which is now outside of the 
city walls, as the true Bethesda. 

Our text offers the Hezekiah pool, which answers many, if not all, of th« 
requirements of the case. 

Sea of Galilee (p. 241). — The sea is pear-shaped, the large end at the 
north, six and three-quarters mile wide, and twelve and a quarter long. The 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 74:1 

surface is between 600 and 700 feet below the ocean level. The shores are on 
all sides quite regular in outline, but the hills are indented into many little bays 
or hollows, some of which are small plains, filled with vegetation, and very 
beautiful. The hills are almost always gently sloping, and might be cultivated 
from bottom to top. The soil is rich, being formed on limestone. Basalt has 
flowed over the tops of the hills from three sources, Kurun Hattin, El-Jish, beyond 
Safed, and in the Jaulan. The beach is paved with minute white broken shells, 
and skirted in many places with oleanders and other flowering shrubs. 

The hills have a general tint of purplish brown, broken in some places by gray 
rocks, or lines of foliage. The east shore is 2,000 feet high, quite uniform in 
height along the summit of the ridge, but cut down by several deep ravines, with 
very few scattering trees, and no forests. On the west the banks are about the 
same height, but the uniform level is relieved by the outlines of Tabor and Hattin, 
which rise into the sky in the distance. 

Northward the outline is still more varied by the heights of Safed, the plain 
of Gennesaret, and the snow-capped Hermon. 

Towards the south the view is lost in the dim hazy heat of the Ghor, with 
Mount Gilboa and Little Hermon on the west side of the Jordan, and Gilead on 
the east. The locality of the Dead Sea can be made out by the level haze in 
the distant horizon, in the morning or near sunset. 

The Jordan river enters near the western shore of the north end, and colors 
the water for nearly a mile with its muddy current, and passes out at the south 
end, a pure bright stream. 

The water of the sea is in some places 250 feet deep, and is clear, bright, and 
sweet to the taste, except near salt springs. 

The climate is almost tropical, ice or frost never appearing. Palms and all 
kinds of trees and vegetables grow in luxuriance, and indigo is cultivated. The 
summer heat is high, but the cool breezes of the morning and evening relieve its 
oppressiveness. 

The waters are well stocked with many kinds of fish, some of which are much 
prized for their flavor. 

Several warm springs pour their waters into the sea, which were increased in 
volume and temperature by the earthquake of 1837. The most noted of the 
hot springs are those near Tiberias, where there are bath-houses of stone, quite 
well built. Josephus speaks of this place as Emmaus, near Tiberias. It was an 
ancient and fortified town of Naphtali, as mentioned in the book of Joshua (xix. 
35). 

In the time of Jesus there were nine cities, or cities and villages, around the 
shores of this lake, only one or two of which now remain — Tiberias and Magdala. 
All the others are in ruins, and even so far destroyed as to be almost entirely 
lost. 

The sea has had several names, as Galilee, from the district in the Roman 
period ; Chinnereth, from a city which stood at or near the present Tiberias ; 
Tiberias, from the city which was named in honor of Tiberius, Emperor of 
Rome ; and Gennesaret, from the plain of that name on its north-west border. 



742 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Lamp- STAND (p. 240). — The recent exploration in Palestine has found manj 
articles of domestic use, such as bottles, jugs, lamps of pottery, and some articles 
of copper, as rings and ornaments, daggers, heads of gods and serpents, and this 
lamp-stand, which was found in a chamber south of the Haram Area. Some of 
these articles were finely wrought, beautifully enamelled, or delicately inlaid. 
There were also a few articles of shell, ivory, and wood carvings, such as boxes 
and cases for the toilet, and objects of luxury. 

Mount op Beatitudes, Kurun Hattin (p. 242).— Almost unanimous con- 
sent locates the Sermon on the Mount on this mountain, which rises high abova 
the plain of Buttauf (Issachar), a little more than half way between Nazareth 
and the Sea of Galilee. Its Arabic name, Kurun Hattin, Horns of Hattin, de- 
scribes its appearance from a distance, for it is marked by sharp peaks at each 
end, especially as seen from the south. The view given in the engraving is from 
the opposite side of the plain, on the north, where the horns, or peaks, are not 
so apparent. The Hebrew word for horn, keren, is almost identical. It is the 
most prominent height on the west of the Sea of Galilee, and the plain at its 
northern foot is very easily reached from the coast towns, while from the plain 
to the summit it is but a few minutes' walk. There is a level place on the top, 
as described in the text, and also a higher standing-place on the horns. It is 
distinctly "the mountain" of the whole region, no other being comparable to it 
in prominence. 

The last great battle between the Crusaders and the Saracens took place on 
and around this mountain. On the 5th July, 1187, the noble army of Knights 
Templars, numbering 2,000, with 8,000 squires, men-at-arms, &c, formed their 
line of battle against the army of Saladin. The contest was carried on through 
several days, until the remnant of the Knights and their followers, then led by 
King Guy of Lusignan, Raynald of Chatillon, the Grand Master, the Bishop of 
Lydda, bearing the relic of the true cross, and Humphrey of Turon, were either 
killed or made prisoners. There has been no Christian power or ruler in Pales- 
tine from that day to this. 

Nain and Little Hekmon (p. 310). — The village of Nain is poorly built, 
of about twenty huts, on a rocky ridge, a spur from Little Hermon (Hill Moreh), 
and near the water-shed between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The ruins 
of an ancient city lie around the village, and there are cave sepulchres in the 
steep side hill east of the site, and also on the west. The expedition of Gideon 
and his 300 men, with lamps in pitchers, and trumpets, is associated with this 
vicinity, for the plain in front of Nain is that on which the Midianites were 
camped. 

Tyre (p. 316) was built both on an island and on the mainland opposite, the 
island being very strongly fortified. Alexander found it necessary to build a 
causeway out to the island during his siege of the city, and the work still re- 
mains, joining the island to the shore. The population in the time of Christ was 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 743 

nearly equal to that of Jerusalem. Cassius, a Christian bishop of Tyre, was at 
the Council of Csesarea. " William of Tyre " was archbishop in the time of th« 
Crusades (a.d. 1124), and wrote, in his history, an account of the wealth, 
strength, and manufactures of the city, among- which glass and sugar are men- 
tioned as articles of great value in trade. The Christian army abandoned the 
place on the eve of June 17, 1194, the Saracens took possession the next morn- 
ing, and have held it ever since. The ancient strength and wealth have disap- 
peared, and its present condition of silence and desolation, as compared to its 
former activity and magnificence, is a most complete fulfilment of prophecy. 
One stone alone of its great sea wall is left in its original position, near the north 
end of the island city. It measures 6^- feet thick by 17 feet long. The ruins 
have been used as a quarry, furnishing columns, capitals, panels, and wrought 
stones for buildings in Joppa, Acre, and Beirut, besides many fine works carried 
to Rome and Constantinople. The ruins of the Christian cathedral, in the south- 
eastern quarter of the modern village, are still imposing, and are visited by every 
passing pilgrim. It was about 250 by 150 feet in extent. Some of its main 
columns were red syenite, and now lie where they fell. 

The most interesting objects next to the cathedral ruin are the immense 
fountain and the remains of the aqueduct for supplying the city with water. A 
few days' work would repair the fountain as good as new. The water is bright 
and clear, and flows in a large stream, which is only used to turn some small mills 
built against the ancient walls. The largest pool or cistern is 80 feet across, 
octagonal, and 20 feet deep. Another is 52 by 47, and 12 deep ; and the third 
is 52 by 36, and 16 deep. 

Tell Hum (p. 319).— See Tell Hum, p. 168. 

GrERSA (p. 366). — The ruins of this place are on the east side of the Sea of 
Galilee, on the left bank of Wady Semakh, just at the foot of the hills, having 
a little plain half a mile to three-quarters of a mile in width between the site 
and the water. The city was enclosed with a wall about three feet thick. The 
largest ruin is of a rectangular building, which was built east and west, but 
which cannot now be identified either as a temple, synagogue, or church. Near 
the water there are a few ruined foundations and walls, which were the port of 
the ancient city. 

There is a hot spring in the hills a mile south of the site, where the hills come 
close to the sea, leaving only a roadway and a little beach, and forming a steep, 
even slope, which may have been the ' ' steep place " mentioned in Matthew viii. 
28. 

There are no rock-hewn tombs (as far as has been examined), and the two 
demoniacs must have lived in one that was built above ground, similar to those 
described at Capernaum. 

Herod's Mite (p. 380). — The farthing was the smallest coin of Herod, unless 
perhaps the mite or lepton was still smaller. There are mites extant of Herod 



744 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



(p. 589) of brass or bronze or copper. There is also a well-known mite of Tibe 
rius and Julius Cassar. 

The best idea of the value of the money that was in use in Palestine in the 
time of Jesus will be had from tables of 



Greek Coins. 

Lepton (mite) 2 mills. 

Drachma. 16 cts. 

Didrachm 32 " 

Stater 64 " 

Mina (pound) 16 dolls. 

Talent 960 " 

Hebrew — Copper or Bronze. 

Weight. 

G-erah ( ^t,-) ... 20 grains. 2 mills. 

One-sixth.... 88 " 3 " 

Zuzah (i) . . .132 " 4 " 

Bekah (■*)... 264 " 8 " 

Shekel 528 " 1 ct. 6 " 

Talent (1,500 shekels) 25 dolls. 



Roman Coins. 

As (farthing) 15 mills. 

Quadrans 3f cts. 

Denarius (penny) 15 " 

Aureus (stater) 3 dolls. 

Talent ...961 " 

Hebrew — Silver. 

Gerah (bean) 25 mills. 

Bekah (divided) 25 cts. 

Shekel (weight) 50 " 

Maneh (talent) 25 dolls. 

Kikkar (round) 1,500 " 



Talent (p. 446). — The Attic talent of Antiochus III. was valued about sixty- 
four cents, being equal to four drachms (tetradrachm). 

Stater (p. 437). — Tribute-money. The stater was equal to the shekel in the 
New Testament time, and therefore one stater was the sum required for the 
tribute for two persons. The image on it was of some Greek king or emperor, 
and an emblematical figure with an inscription telling whose money it was — as 
money of Alexander. 

Judas Money (p. 414). — The shekel coined by Simon or Eleazar. 

Map of Galilee (Central and South) (p. 378). — The numerous villages and 
cities, and the many unnamed ruins of ancient towns, give some idea of the 
dense population that inhabited Palestine in its prosperous days. 

Many of these sites are without names, and there are quite a number of Scrip- 
tural names not yet identified with their sites. There are not many roads now, 
and prc"bably never were more than a few great lines, connected with the smaller 
towns by bridle-paths, as is the case now, the traveller needing a guide for a jour- 
ney of a few miles. 

Tyre (p. 402).— See page 316. 



Sedon (p. 427). — The Great Zidon of Phoenicia was built on the northern 
slope of a promontory which juts north-west into the Mediterranean Sea, and is 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 745 

the most ancient of the country. Homer says the large silver bowl given as tha 
prize to the swiftest runner by Achilles was made at Sidon (Iliad, xxiii. 743). 
Id the Odyssey (iv. 614) there is also an account of " a divine work," a bowl of 
silver with a gold rim, the work of Hephaestus, and a gift from King Phaedimus 
of Sidon. He mentions the beautifully embroidered robes that were brought 
from there for Andromache ; and it is also noticed in the Book of Kings (1 Ki. 
v. 6) that skilled workmen and not traders were their special pride. 

While under the Persian rule the city rose to great wealth and importance, 
and to live carelessly, after the manner of the Sidonians, became a proverb 
(Judges xviii. 7). The prize in a boat-race, witnessed by Xerxes at Abydos, was 
won by Sidonians ; and in reviewing his fleet he sat under a golden canopy in a 
Sidonian galley, and, at the grand assembly of his officers, the King of Sidon sat 
in the first seat. Strabo said there was the best opportunity for acquiring a 
knowledge of the sciences of arithmetic and astronomy, and of all other branches 
of philosophy. 

It is now called Saide. The vicinity is one great garden, filled with every 
kind of fruit-bearing trees, nourished by streams from Lebanon. Its chief ex- 
ports are silk, cotton, and nutgalls. A mission station of Americans are working 
among 5,000 people. 

There are many sepulchres in the rocks at the base of the mountain east of 
Sidon, and also in the plain. One of the most beautiful and interesting Phoeni- 
cian monuments in existence was discovered in a cave in 1855. It is a sarco- 
phagus of black syenite, with a lid carved in human form, bandaged like a 
mummy, the face being bare. There is an inscription in the Phoenician lan- 
guage on the body, and another on the head. In them the king of the Sidonians 
is mentioned, and it is said that his mother's name was Ashtoreth. The date of 
the inscription is assigned to the 11th century B.C. 

Gad aha (p. 407). — This was a Greek city, celebrated for the hot baths near 
it, and for its temples and theatres, the ruins of which may still be traced. It 
is five miles south of the Sea of Galilee, and nearly three from the river Hiero- 
max, which some think was called the Jabbok. Some of the ruined tombs have 
rooms ten to twenty feet square, and even larger, with many small recesses in 
their side walls for receiving bodies. The doors are of stone, turning on stone 
hinges, and some still in use by the people, who occupy the tombs as dwellings. 

There was a straight street from end to end of the city, nearly two miles long, 
with a colonnade on each side. Not a house or a column of the whole city is 
standing except the western theatre. 

The hot springs are in a natural basin near the river, a beautiful spot, and 
average 110° F., smelling strongly of sulphur, and they are now used by quite a 
number of invalids who believe in their curative properties. The ruins of baths 
and houses are so many and important as to indicate that there must have been 
at some time a population of at least a thousand invalids and attendants at the 
baths. 

The eastern theatre is still quite perfect in its ground plan, although the 
are covered with rubbish and loose stones. 



746 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The western theatre was much larger, and was only about a thousand feei 
from the eastern, and is in quite a good state of preservation, having been verj 
strongly built. The seats are of stone, well designed, finely finished, and scarcely 
show the effect of so many centuries of neglect. The entrance was by a grand 
stairway leading from the main street, having Corinthian columns on each side. 

The basalt pavement of the streets shows here and there the marks of wagon 
wheels, which had worn quite deep ruts in the hard stone. 

The Jordan valley, Sea of G-alilee, and the mountains beyond, are in plain 
view from the brow of the hill near the city. 

Bethsaida (p. 414). — This interesting place was on the Jordan, just above its 
entrance into the Sea of Galilee, and there was no second Bethsaida, as has been 
supposed, west of Capernaum. The arguments for and against are given with 
much detail by W. M. Thomson {Land and Book), and by the Palestine Explo- 
ration {Jerusalem Recovered). A misunderstanding of the text made it seem 
necessary to find a second place of the name on the shore of the sea. The re- 
cent discovery of the Sinaitic copy of the gospels, which gives a more correct 
version of the passage, has settled the question in favor of one city of the name 
located on the Jordan river It may have been on both sides of the river, and 
so have been one part "in Galilee" and the other "beyond Jordan." The 
ruins, although they are found on both sides of the river, do not appear equal to 
the requirements of the text of Josephus, in which it is described as an impor- 
tant city, raised to the first rank, and named Julias, in honor of Julia, tht- 
daughter of the Emperor Titus. Herod Philip, the Tetrarch, was buried there 
in a magnificent tomb, which has not yet been found. The place where the five 
thousand were fed has been located in the Plain of Butiha by some, and at Ain Ba- 
rideh, near Tiberias, by others. If the correction * of the reading derived from 
the Sinaitic MS. is the more ancient and reliable, then Ain Barideh, or more cor- 
rectly, Ain el Fuliyeh (Warm Springs), was the place. 

C^/SAREA Philippi (p. 416). — The ancient Paneas (Pan's city) was named in 
honor of Tiberius Caesar by Herod Philip, who added his own name to that of the 
emperor. It was a place of idolatrous worship from the most ancient times, and 
there are shrines near the Jordan source now. This fountain is one of the largest 
in Syria. The ruins of the town are on a hill a little east of the fountain. The 
ruins of the castle are on the hill above the fountain, and among them are some 
bevelled stones which indicate a Phoenician origin. 

"Mount Hermon" (p. 428), said Dr. Vandyke, of Beirut, Syria, "is a 
beautiful sight from every side, wherever visible, near or afar off." Its summit 
is crowned with perpetual snow, and its lower slopes are clothed with forests. 
The summer sun melts the snow from the crests of the ridges, leaving it in the 

* The corrected text reads: "When therefore the boats came from Tiberias (which was), nigh 
nnto where they did also eat bread." The most ancient writers record the tradition that the locality 
was at Ain Barideh. (John vi. 23. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 747 

deep ravines, where it appears like long white lines at a distance, and has been 
compared to the white locks of an old man. The name Jebel-esh-Shekh nieana 
the chief mountain, a title which every traveller gives it spontaneously. It may 
be seen from the hills a few miles north of Jerusalem, and from any part of 
the country north of that, and also from the heights of Moab. Its height is a little 
less than ten thousand feet ; but as it stands alone and separated by several miles 
firom any other high range, it appears even more majestic and lofty than Leb- 
anon itself, which is higher. Whether this mountain or its slope near Paneas 
(Caesarea Philippi) was the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus, has not been 
determined ; but the common consent of many writers on the subject has con- 
nected its name with that event, and the only other locality (Mount Tabor) which 
at one time was thought to have been the scene is now almost entirely rejected, 
partly because Josephus gives an account of a Roman fort on its summit, the 
foundations of which are still traceable. 

Joppa (p. 444). — This was the only port of Judea, and from the earliest 
times has been subject to danger, having been taken by armies, sacked, burnt, 
and rebuilt many times. Nearly every ancient nation of Europe and Asia Minor, 
Mesopotamia, and Egypt, has had a hand in making the history of Joppa. The 
present city is but little more than 125 years old — some of the residents remem- 
bering the time when there were not more than a dozen houses in the town — and 
the present number of people is about 16,000. Soap is the leading manufac- 
ture. Fruit and silk are exported in large quantities. 

The landing of shipping is made very dangerous by rocks, especially in windy 
weather, and even steamers are often compelled to go on to Haiffa, nearly sixty 
miles away to the north. The rocks which lie just outside of the inner harbor 
are famous in the works of the ancient historians and poets as the monster which 
devoured Andromeda and was killed by Perseus. They still devour many boats, 
and even large ships, with all their cargoes, and sometimes also their passen- 
gers. 

The gardens around Joppa are famous for most excellent fruits, probably be- 
cause the whole plain is percolated by the waters from the hills, which may be 
drawn up in every garden from a few feet deep. 

The followers of tradition show a "grave" of Dorcas and a "house" of 
Simon the Tanner. The tanneries are a little south of the city, where they pro- 
bably have been from the earliest, and were in Peter's time. 

The route for a railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem has been surveyed, following 
very closely the ancient, summer road of Solomon's time. It will seem almost a 
sacrilege to ask for "tickets for Jerusalem," and "through tickets for Bethle- 
hem," after the ages of weary climbing of pilgrims, mostly on foot, over the 
steep rocky hills. 

Siloam (p. 454) . — This pool is one of the very few localities in and around 
Jerusalem that is not disputed, and its Arabic name, Silwan, is almost identical 
with the Hebrew Shiloach, or Siloah. It is near the junction of the Tyro- 



748 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

poeon valley with the Kidron. The reservoir is fifty-three feet long by eighteen 
wide, and nineteen deep. The water flows from the Virgin Fountain (and did 
formerly from other city pools), underground, to Siloam, with an ebb and flow de- 
pendent on the supply of water, being more freqent in the rainy season. There 
is another pool a short distance below this, which is nearly five times the size of 
Siloam, and is called the Birket el Hamra, and may be the Solomon's Pool of 
Josephus, and the King's Pool of Nehemiah (ii. 14). Jewish tradition makes 
Gihon and Siloam one and the same pool., The village of Siloam, seen in the 
view of the Kidron valley, page 629, is apparently a number of tomb dwellings 

Sanhedrln (p. 455). — The supreme council of the Jews, composed of seven- 
ty-one members, who represented the twelve tribes, consisting of chief priests 
(the heads of the twenty -four classes of priests), the elders (men of age, experi- 
ence, and honor), the scribes, and the doctors (an order of men learned in the 
sacred law). The president (Nasi, chief) was generally the high-priest, although 
chosen by vote (lot), and sat in the centre of the semicircle on an elevated 
divan, with the vice-president at his right hand. Two scribes acted as secre- 
taries. The room in which they met was called G-azzith, and was at one time in 
the south-east corner of the group of buildings around the Temple. It also met, 
according to Matthew (xxvi. 3), in the residence of the high-priest. They sat 
every day, from the morning sacrifice to the evening sacrifice, except Sabbath, 
when they instructed the people by lectures. The Sanhedrin, after the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem (A.D. 68 to 80), met at Jabne (Jamneel), under the rabbi Zak- 
kai ; and after being transferred back and forth two or three times between 
Jabne and Usha, was finally located at Tiberias (A.D. 193), where it retained its 
name until about the year A.D. 300, when it lost its peculiar hold on the Jewish 
mind and became a consistory only, and in A.D. 425 finally closed its sittings. 
The seventy appointed by Jesus took the place in the new church of the San- 
hedrin in the old economy, as the twelve apostles answered to the twelve 
tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 30). 

If Moses was the real founder of the Sanhedrin, it had a continuous history 
for nineteen centuries. 

The only legal modes of punishing by death allowed to the Sanhedrin by the 
law of Moses were by stoning, burning, beheading, and strangling. The Romans 
took away this privilege, and no one could be put to death without their sanc- 
tion. 

The Small Sanhedrin was a judicial court appointed by the Great Sanhe- 
drin, and had twenty -three members and a president (excellency). Their time 
of meeting was on Monday and Thursday, which were stated market-days. 

A smaller court of three judges tried petty offences against the person or 
property. 

Denarius (p. 464). —The value of the denarius (penny) was fifteen cents, 
which, being the price of a day's labor, and also of a Roman soldier, would vary 
en. value from time to time. When first coined in Rome, B.C. 269, it was worth 
fifteen cents, but it was reduced by Nero to twelve cents. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 749 

Way to Jericho (p. 466). — About eight miles from Bethany, on the road tc 
Jericho, which passes through what was probably the ancient valley of the brook 
Cherith, now Wady Kelt, there are ruins of a monastery or inn, on the right-hand 
side of the road, now called the Khan of the Good Samaritan, and on the oppo- 
site side of the brook, or Wady, there are other ruins not named. 

From the road, a few rods east of the ruins, there is a glimpse of the Jordan 
valley, the course of the river, the Dead Sea, and the Moab mountains. The 
place has always been noted as very unsafe to travellers, and is so now, and it is 
likely that on this account it was selected as the locality of the parable of the 
Good Samaritan. The region is called desert or wilderness, and is without 
dwellings, except the huts or tents of the shepherds who watch the flocks and 
herds, which find excellent pasture on the rocky hills and in the winding ravines 
a great part of the year. There are very few trees, many small shrubs, and in 
the winter an abundance of flowers. 

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is very steep, descending nearly 4,000 
feet in fifteen miles, and abounds in smooth rock and loose stones, both unsafe 
to the foot both of man and beast. Sometimes, as in the way below the ruin, 
the gorge is narrow, and walled in on both sides by almost perpendicular rocka 
500 feet high, in the bottom of which the stream flows, or rather rushes in a 
continuous cascade or foaming rapids for miles together. 

The holes or caves of the hermits of the Middle Ages begin a few miles above 
Jericho, and are now occupied by birds only. Some of them have been examined 
and found to contain dust and bones ankle deep. No books or inscriptions of any 
kind, except a few names and extracts from the Scriptures, have been noticed. 
Here and there, as the way approaches the plain of Jericho, there are ruins of 
chapels on the heights, where the monks met for public services. 

The plain of Jericho appears from the road very level, and dotted in many 
places by green clumps of vegetation marking springs, and lines of trees also 
following the brooks, the broadest being along the course of the Jordan. 

Bethany (p. 466) is on the Mount of Olives, a mile and a half from Jerusalem 
east, and is now called El Lazariyeh (Lazarus' village). It is in a hollow, and 
the few tumble-down huts are on a slope, around and below an old tower, which 
is called after Lazarus, of course. There is also a tomb of Lazarus, into which 
you descend by twenty-six steps. The orchards near the village grow olives, 
almonds, pomegranates, figs, and carobs, while there are a few oaks. The 
people who live there are busy with their orchards or flocks, and also in the 
manufacture of articles of curiosity and slight use, including a number of anti- 
quities which they sell to travellers. 

Fountain in Per^ea (p. 480). — The east side of Jordan is almost unknown, 
scarcely one place in ten that were known in Bible times being now identified. 
There are few inhabited villages, but many tribes of Bedawins, living in black 
tents, whose numbers must be very great, yet far below the multitudes who filled 
the cities in the time of the Greeks and the Ptomans. The book on the ' 'Giant Cities 



750 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. 

of Bashan " gives a glimpse of the many wonderful ruins which are found in 
every part of the land, from the Jordan to the desert. Captain Burton (of the 
Mecca pilgrimage fame) lately visited the Leja, the Trachon of the Romans, 
where he found many ruined cities, in which were many fine houses cut in the 
solid rock, and he gives a description of an extensive cave, one of those men- 
tioned by Josephus. The fountain drawn here is near the ancient Heshbon. 

Drachma (p. 487). — The value of the drachm varied from fourteen to seven- 
teen cents, with the kind of talent of which it was a division, and there were 
three varieties of talent : Attic, Phoenician, Ptolemaic. 

High-Priest (p. 507). — The dress of the Jewish high-priest, and the breast- 
plate, have been the subject of much inquiry, critical examination of the Hebrew 
text, and investigation into the manners, customs, and costume of the ancients, 
but without as yet determining beyond a doubt any one particular. The breast- 
plate was symbolical of the twelve tribes, and the placing of the twelve engraved 
gems in their several positions was a sign of the presence of the twelve tribes before 
Jehovah. Josephus gives a detailed description of the garments and their sym- 
bolical meanings in Ant. iii. 7, § 7. The " holy garments " were peculiar to and 
worn only by the high-priest, and certain pieces were put on only on the great 
day of atonement, when he went into the Holy of Holies to appear before the 
presence of Jehovah for the people. 

Ephraim (p. 508), now called Et Taiyibeh. The village is built on a conical 
hill, and completely walled in, about twelve miles north-east of Jerusalem. 
There are some ruins of antiquity, and the site is very favorable for fine pros- 
pects, and it is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments (Joshua xviii. 
23; Judges vi. 11 ; Micah i. 10; John xi. 54). 

Arch of Wilson, at Jerusalem (p. 528). — This is an arch on the west of the 
temple area wall, opposite the Double Gate of the Chain. It is an arched room 
which has been lined with cement or plaster, and used as a cistern, in some age 
later than that of its first construction. Exploration shows that the stones of the 
walls of this room, which were traced to a depth of forty -four feet below the 
spring of the arch, are of stones similar to those in the upper part of the wall of 
the Harem at the "Jews' wailing-place. " The chamber is now filled up with 
stones and rubbish nearly forty feet, on the top of which the cement is laid. 
There are several other smaller arched chambers in the same vicinity, which were 
used in their day for stores or for water. 

Jericho (p. 536). — There are three distinct localities at Jericho which claim 
our attention as the sites referred to in ancient history. The village of Er Riha 
is of least interest among the three, and can scarcely date before the Crusades, 
unless it may be one of the places mentioned in the book of Joshua, perhaps Gil- 
gal. Jericho of Joshua's time would then have been at the Elisha Fountain, 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 751 

now called Ain es Sultan ; and the Jericho of the New Testament time at the 
foot of the hills where the brook Cherith, now WadyKelt, enters the plain. The 
name in the Hebrew means a fragrant place, and the abundance of flowering 
shrubs in the rainy season even now gives some color to the title. Josephus de- 
scribes it as surrounded by gardens, orchards, and palm-groves in his day, and 
says that it is not easy to light on any climate equal to it. The Romans held it 
as an important town, and Herod fortified it, naming the fort Cyprus, after his 
mother, and a town after his brother Phasaelus. He is also said to have built a 
new town a little north, in the same plain, which was also named Phasselis. 
Vespasian made it the head of a toparchy. It was destroyed during the siege of 
Jerusalem. The ruins are mostly foundations and heaps of rubbish, which 
have been quite extensively examined lately without yielding any valuable 
antiquity. 

Six miles across the plain, on the west bank of the Jordan, are the ruins of 
what is now called u The Jews' Castle," an old monastery of the time of the Cru- 
sades. It was once a grand pile of well-built cloisters and chapel, and is now 
quite an interesting ruin. The vaults are large and roomy, and would make ex- 
cellent store-houses, if there was anything there to store. What little grain that 
is raised in the plain is carried away by the farmers, who live among the hills, 
where the climate is cooler, as soon as it is harvested. 

Jerusalem (p. 544). — The view of the city from Olivet looking over the 
" Garden of G-ethsemane" is the finest, showing the city to its best advantage. 
At that distance it is a beautiful sight, with its domes, towers, walls, well- 
built convents, and English church. A nearer inspection reveals the utter 
neglect of streets and of the walls of houses fronting on the streets. The only 
pleasant places in the city are in the court-yards of houses, or in the square be- 
fore the English consulate and church, and in the Temple area. The streets are 
all narrow, and in many places arched over or shaded with awnings or mats, and 
are very badly paved or not paved at all. The rain makes a torrent in the mid- 
dle of the way, and no one takes the trouble to clean the street, street-sweeping 
being unheard of. 

The city is small, measuring a mile and a half by three-quarters, but there is 
scarcely a place in the world which has given scholars and investigators so much 
severe labor with so little result. It is almost completely an enigma, after so 
many years of the most careful exploration. The descriptions of the Old Testa- 
ment writers were not very minute, but those of Josephus were very exact and 
particular, while of many points there are accounts by other writers of antiquity, 
so that it seems almost marvellous that there should have been any difficulty, 
until we are reminded that during the Crusades, as well as in the earlier ages 
succeeding the destruction of the city by Titus, Jerusalem was regarded as a 
peculiarly sacred city, and the Christian residents desired to have every event 
that is mentioned in the Bible, as having happened in or near it, located and hon- 
ored with some appropriate memorial of tomb, chapel, or church, and therefore, 
when the exact location had been lost another was adopted and consecrated, and 



752 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

among the multitude of "sacred localities" it is just a little surprising to find 
not only every trifling as well as important event preserved, but also the inci- 
dents and personages of parables embodied, and provided with a habitation and 
history, such as the rich man and his house. 
Stater (p. 553). 

Augustus Com (p. 571). — The imperial coin of the first Roman emperoi 
(Caesar) who assumed the title of Augustus, which means the venerable. This 
title was adopted by all the Caesars until near the downfall of Rome. 

Jerusalem (p. 582). See page 544. — The beautiful location of the city is 
given in this view, which shows the depression of the valley of Kidron (Jehosha- 
phat) and the height of Zion, with the very conspicuous site of the temple, so 
placed as to be visible from every direction. The dome of the work now standing 
over the famous Rock (said to have been Araunah's threshing-floor) can be seen 
from Kerak, beyond the Dead Sea, by good eyes without a glass, a distance of 
forty miles in a straight line. It is also visible from the summit of Cibeah, north- 
east of the city. Beautiful for situation the temple on Zion certainly was, as 
Bung by the " sweet singer of Israel." 

Farthing (p. 589.)— See Herod's Mite, page 380. 

Robinson's Arch (p. 596). — Edward Robinson, D.D., of New York, has done 
more to revive a study of the Bible in our day than any other man. His researches 
in Palestine are the most important work during the last century, if not since the 
Crusades, since they have been the direct means of restoring to our knowledge 
several hundred sites of cities named in the Bible, which had been lost for centu- 
ries. He also minutely examined many ruins, and rarely failed to bring out some 
point of historical interest. This "Arch" is the one destroyed by Titus in the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and the only remains visible above ground are the few 
jutting fragments in the wall to the right, as shown in the picture. The stones 
which formed the arch are lying on the rock or soil, more than forty feet below 
the present surface, the valley having been filled up, in some age since a.d. 70, to 
its present level. 

Half Shekel. — The shekel (p. 603) was first coined by Simon the Macca 
bee, under the authority of Antiochus VII., 139 B.C., and the inscription recorded 
this and other privileges that the Jews had received from their rulers, dating 
from the first year of Simon's rule : "In the first year of Simon the Benefactor 
of the Jews, High-Priest." The shekel was struck in silver and in bronze. 
There are a number of specimens still existing in the museums or in private 
collections of the coins of the Jews in nearly every age, from the first of Simon 
to the last of Barkokab, a.d. 130. The half shekel (p. 612) was the regular 
yearly Temple dues from each adult Jew. Those who lived in foreign lands, 
Greece, Egypt, etc., changed their money into Jewish coin before paying, because 
sacred money only could be received into the treasury. 

The devices on Hebrew coins had reference to the productions of the country. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 753 

and also to their religious history. The bunch of grapes, palm-tree, palm 
branch, with leaves braided and called lulab, ears of wheat, cup of manna, vase 
or jar of oil, baskets of fruit, horns of plenty, the throne or chair of State, the 
State umbrella, anchor, wreath of olive leaves, Temple portico, are all well known 
on coins now in existence. 

Table (p. 615). — The oriental table is what we should call a tea-tray, is 
generally circular, five or six feet across, and is used on stool about sixteen inches 
high. The party sits on the divan on one side, and on cushions laid on the floor 
on the other sides, all around it. The servants (or the host's wife or daughter) 
serve the dishes, usually one at a time. There is a large copper table (or tray) 
at Salahiyeh, near Damascus, which has on it the revenue stamp of several Roman 
emperors, and has been an heir-loom in the same tribe, or it may be the same 
family, for nearly two thousand years. Nearly every traveller who goes there 
pays an extra price for a dinner served on this antique table. 

G-ethsemane (p. 628). — The so-called Garden of G-ethsemane is a "locality " 
of the Christian monks of Jerusalem, which is placed more for convenience near 
the city than for any desire to meet the demands of the text and of his- 
toric accuracy. The old olive-trees are its chief attraction, and are certainly 
great curiosities, being, without doubt, many centuries old, and, it may be, 
the descendants of some planted in the time of the Crusades. Titus de- 
stroyed all trees around Jerusalem during his siege, so that not one that was 
then growing, even if it could have lived so long, is now standing. The 
"garden," or " olive-press," as some read the original, was probably in some 
more retired part of Olivet, away from the public road, and, it may be, nearer 
Bethany. The most ancient Christian writers (Eusebius, Adamnanus) mention 
some such locality as "a place of prayer for the faithful" (Jerome), having a 
church built in it. The Empress Helena may have selected this spot, as she 
did many others, as convenient and appropriate for her special honors, and 
named it Gethsemane in memory of the place mentioned in the Gospel nar- 
rative. 

The eight old trees inside of the stone wall are supposed to have an addi- 
tional proof of antiquity in the fact that the Turkish government have always 
levied upon them, as they did on all fruit-trees which were standing at the time 
of their conquest, a tax of one medina ; those planted after that time being 
rated differently. This would date them before a.d. 634, when Omar took the 
city, or, if the Turkish conquest is meant, before A.D. 1087. The " garden" is 
filled with flowers of many kinds, which are carefully tended by the monks, and 
are pressed on little pieces of paper and sold to pilgrims. The walls of the city 
near the Stephen Gate are in plain view, only 850 feet distant. 

A little farther up the Kidron valley there are some "gardens" or shady 
places under olive-trees, where many resort for cool shade and quiet, away from 
the bustle of the city and distant from the public roads. 

Kedron Valley, from Akeldama (p. 629).— The valley of the brook Kid- 
ron below Jerusalem is full of gardens, which are supplied with water from Si- 

48 



754: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

loam, and in the rainy season it is really a beautiful spot ; but in the hot, dry, 
and dusty summer it is almost a desert. In the view the Mount of Olives rises 
to the right, and the village of Siloam is at its foot, bordering the edge of the 
Kidron. Scopus is seen in the distance, and the corner of the Temple wall rises 
high over Ophel, which falls steep down on the west side of the Kidron. Both 
of these slopes are covered with tombstones, every one of which indicates a 
dozen graves below, or it may be a hundred bodies to each, for this has been a 
vast cemetery for all devout persons, both Christian and Mohammedan, and 
especially Jew, for many ages, and never in greater request than now. 

It is thought by some that Solomon's idol shrines were built on the site of 
Siloam, or on the summit behind it to the _ __ .t, while others think the pagan 
high place was more probably on the summit of Olivet. There were also shrines 
to Moloch in the valley of Tophet or Hinnom, where children were offered to the 
god in burnt sacrifice. This valley, with its horrid associations, has become the 
poetic type of hell. 

The Aksa mosque (originally the chapel built by the Knights Templars) is in 
plain view on the Temple site, and Zion rises high to the east, with its long slope 
terraced, dotted with orchards and scattering trees, and crowned with the ancient 
church and mosque called the Tomb of David. Everywhere the surface is carpeted 
with a bright green in the rainy season. The Tyropoeon Valley joins the Kidron 
at Siloam Pool, and the Hinnom valley at En Rogel, when the three become the 
Wady en Nar (Valley of Fire), and flow by the old convent of Santa Saba to the 
Dead Sea. (See page 662.) 

Map of Jerusalem (p. 636). — The various sites named, except Golgotha, 
are located according to tradition, or the selection of the monks at Jerusalem. 

Ecce Homo Arch (p. 671), over the Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem. This is 
called the Ecce Homo Arch because of the legend that Pilate exposed Jesus to 
the multitude at the middle window in the wall over the arch, and said, ' ' Be- 
hold the man." Pilate's palace may have been near, but there is no proof, either 
of ruin or record, as to where it actually was. Nor is there any reason to believe 
that the street called Via Dolorosa, "Way of Grief," is even on the line of the 
street through which Jesus was led "out" to Golgotha, and it certainly is 
not, if the true site of Golgotha has been found at the Jeremiah Grotto, north- 
west of the Damascus gate. The streets of the holy city are almost always fre- 
quented by pilgrims from every Christian country, habited in an endless variety 
of costume. The narrow way is often perilous from the rush of eager, hurry- 
ing, loaded men and animals, and is very unsafe after dark from the loose pave- 
ment, steep, crooked ways, and the numbers of half wild dogs, whose ' ' tooth " 
is against every eatable thing. Very few of the streets are named, although the 
Christians are beginning to apply names to some of the principal ways, for their 
own convenience of description. (See Jerusalem.) 

Calvary (p. 665). — The question as to the true site of the crucifixion has 
very much depended on the theories respecting the location of the two more 



/ 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 755 

ancient walls of Jerusalem. No one can be quite sure as to the precise location of 
those walls, and no recent discovery of what are supposed to be those remains can 
be used to strengthen the claim of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be located 
&a the site of Calvary. It may argue that the Mary church built by Helena was 
on the same site, but cannot determine that the site selected by Helena was not 
adopted for convenience rather than fixed by actual knowledge of the ground. 

It would seem to be a very strange thing that the site of the crucifixion of their 
Master and His burial place should not have been carefully kept known to man- 
kind by his followers. We can scarcely imagine Americans of any generation losing 
knowledge of the grave of Washington. But we must recollect that the followers 
of Jesus were not superstitious, and that the departure of Jesus from the world was 
followed by the destruction of Jerusalem, that the Christians as well as the Jews 
were dispersed, and that succeeding centuries so changed the appearance of Jerusa- 
lem that now not a spot there is visible which was visible to the eyes of Jesus and 
his followers. If we take the Evangelists as guides, we must be sure that it was 
not the Church of Sepulchre, but probably was the hill of the Grotto of Jeremiah. 

The points in favor of our site as the true Golgotha (Hebrew for skull, as 
Kranion is Greek for skull, and Calvary is from the Latin for skull), are — 

1. The place was out of the city, as this must have been then, and is now. 

2. It was also " nigh unto the city," as this is about five hundred feet from 
the nearest part of the city wall. 

3. The hill is shaped like the upper part of a skull. 

4. The place was near a main road to and from the city, as this is. 

5. The spot was very conspicuous, and this is also. 

6. There were gardens and sepulchres near, and now (and probably also there 
were anciently) there are rock tombs of great extent and magnificence of design 
tjnd finish, which give an idea of the wealth and splendor of the ancient Jews. 

7. And, finally, there is no other spot that claims equal attention or respect. 

Capernaum (p. 709). See page 168.— The ruin at Tell Hum, which stands 
near the water edge, is evidently a building of a later age than the synagogue, 
whose ruins are on the hill higher up. The view from near this spot is very fine. 
There are a great many thorns and thistles here, which make it almost impossible 
to move about, where once there were streets full of a busy, proud population. 

Restored view op Jerusalem (p. 704). 

Urpa Coin (p. 709). — This bronze coin, or medal, was found at Urfa, Syria, 
and may possibly date as early as the fourth or fifth century a.d. The inscrip- 
tion indicates a Christian origin, " Jesus Christ, king of kings." The specimen 
here engraved was loaned to the designer by Rev. G. B. Nutting, missionary of 
the A. B. C. F. M. at Urfa. 

Olivet (p. 710). — The mountain on the east of Jerusalem is between two and 
three hundred feet higher than the city, is more than a mile long from north to 
Bouth, and is divided into four summits, which are named, beginning at the 



756 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

north, 1. Mount of the Men of Galilee (Viri Galilei); 2. Ascension Mount; 3. 
Mount of the Prophets ; 4. Mount of Offence. 

During the middle ages the mount was dotted all over with chapels or monu- 
ments of some kind, marking the localities selected as the sites of interesting 
events recorded in Scripture, and these are now still in use, or their former lo- 
cation is known and pointed out. The "ascension" is commemorated by a 
chapel on the summit, nearly opposite to the Temple site ; but this is merely a 
monkish tradition, and the true site of the ascension cannot be determined 
beyond the one important allusion in the text, which says that it was " as far as 
to Bethany" (Luke xxiv. 50), and therefore must have been somewhere on the 
eastern slope of Olivet. The view includes all that can be seen of the mountain 
from a point near the road to Mar Saba, north-east of the Arab village Beit' Sa- 
hur. The south-east corner of the Temple site just appears in the left side of 
the picture, to mark the position of the city of Jerusalem, and the site of Beth- 
any is but a short distance to the right of the large tree, hidden behind a ridge. 



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